Mr. Conn Murray:

We fully drew down our capital and are having further capital appraisals with the Department in respect of the Traveller community. The amount for the work we are doing is €6.4 million and we would welcome more. If there is some left over we would like it to be passed on as quickly as possible.

There has always been a gap between lists and needs. I have been working in housing for a long time and I have seen my housing list reduce by 35%. This is a fact that is never mentioned. I have seen 2,500 tenancies given in the past 18 months or two years, which means decent accommodation is provided under a housebuilding lease, a 50% RAS scheme or otherwise. We will exceed the targets for the current year, which was 251 homes while we expect to deliver maybe 300 through the buy, build and lease programmes. We have set up a specific unit to target dereliction in villages and have assigned staff directly to the municipal districts on that. The repair and lease scheme is exceptionally valuable for keeping life in the communities and not allowing them to disappear over time.