Mr. John McCarthy:

To clarify, the Minister's response to the parliamentary question refers to the Housing Agency. The Housing Agency was used as the vehicle for co-ordinating the activity and for working with the local authorities but as Mr. O'Connor has said, decisions on demand in different areas and any issues of over-concentration were taken at local level. I do not want there to be any misinterpretation. The Housing Agency was not overriding local authorities but was merely the vehicle for co-ordinating the inputs from the various local authorities.

There is a Government policy dating from 2007 on delivering homes and sustaining communities. It does have a sustainable-communities philosophy at the heart of it that points to the issues and difficulties associated with large concentrations of social housing in particular areas. It is not always the case that there are issues but in some cases in the past there have been.