Bobby Aylward (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I know all of this, as we have been through it, but, ultimately, there was no one in the approved housing bodies willing to take on any of the houses, certainly among the ones I approached. When I asked them why, they said they were not interested in the scheme because there were costs involved in bringing houses up to a certain standard and so on. I said that was nonsense where there were people who had been living in the houses for 15 or 16 years, that it was their own house, that they would be glad to stay where they were and gladly pay the rent if left in situ. However, no one was even willing to look at the houses. They went through the entire process about which Mr. O'Connor is telling me. They went to the banks and the voluntary housing bodies, but none of them would take up the houses. That disappointed me when the scheme was in place for that purpose.