David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

-----appear before us so that we can explore the issue with them. I have spoken to a number of them. If the Secretary General remembers the last time he was in here, I had contacted a number of managers who I know across this State and that was one of their concerns. I am interested to see how this works out. Obviously, it is still not fully resolved and I hope that it is because it certainly was one of the impediments.

I want to move on to discussing the approved housing bodies. Much has been made of the volume of such bodies. EUROSTAT has compiled a report that deals with whether the expenditure for approved housing bodies would be on-balance sheet or off-balance sheet. The second paragraph of its conclusions reads:

Moreover, Eurostat considers that AHBs have a non-market nature due to their principal aims and other existing provisions. Furthermore, the prices charged for renting cannot be seen as being economically significant, due to the fact, among others, that they do not seem to respond to change in the market or to economic signals and have little influence on how much the producer is prepared to supply and on the quantities demanded.

Essentially what I am taking from that is that the not-for-profit element of the approved housing bodies needs to change fundamentally, that the rents need to reflect market rents and that the investments decisions that are made need to change as well.