Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Absolutely not. It concerned rent pressure zones and all the great difficulty renters are having. I have three supplementary questions. I am sure Mr. McDonagh winces every time politicians clumsily try to work our way through stuff around the fiscal space because getting our heads around it is genuinely very challenging for many of us. I will relay back what I think Mr. McDonagh was saying and might put another question. If the AHBs are taken off-balance sheet, because that is retrospectively applied in the baseline, the Government expenditure bit of it in terms of capital or current has no impact. If the Government continues to spend the same amount, all things are equal. A question arises on private borrowing and the spending of that private borrowing for capital construction because with the exception of the small special needs AHBs, 70% of the capital spend by AHBs is Housing Finance Agency, HFA, or private sector borrowing. Because the HFA is Government-backed, that will be on-balance sheet no matter what so the key question is private sector borrowing. Is there visibility in terms of the extent to which that private sector borrowing occupies a fiscal space? If it was reclassified off-Government balance sheet, how much fiscal space would that save? For example, if the borrowing last year was in the region of €200 million, that is obviously quartered because it is smoothed out over the four years so it is a quarter of that. Am I right in saying that whatever their borrowing requirements are or their actual borrowing is and the spending of that annually from private source, a quarter of that is the fiscal space that would become available to Government if it is off-balance sheet? If that is wrong, could the witnesses put me right on that?

An interesting point by Ms Scott in respect of the propositions that have been put to the Department of Finance by the Housing Alliance was that the Department would need more detail from the alliance before it would go to the Department's statistical people. For the benefit of the Housing Alliance, which is probably paying quite close attention to us today, could she tell us what kind of detail the Department is looking for? If the alliance or those of us who are concerned about this are to be helpful, what more does the Department need from them because it would be interesting?

In response to Mr. Lemass, I have always been a bit nervous about the debate on securing off-balance sheet because if it comes at a cost, I would much prefer if it stayed where it is in terms of housing policy. It really does get down to the issues around rent setting and reviews, allocations and nominations but also investment decisions because this is one of the things EUROSTAT highlighted in a way the CSO did not because today, the investment decisions of the AHBs are really proxy decisions of Government because it sets the overall targets and the AHBs play their role in that. Is it unfair for me to read between the lines of what Mr. Lemass said to say that part of our difficulty and part of why this is taking so long is because in respect of the challenges of maintaining the kind of policy focus the Government has chosen and the AHB sector has chosen to date in terms of that not-for-profit subsidised housing ethos, getting them off-balance sheet could require very significant policy changes that would have significant policy implications? That is what I am hearing from Mr. Lemass. I have not heard anybody from the Department say it as frankly before.

With regard to the Housing (Regulation of Approved Housing Bodies) Bill, which we discussed yesterday and which relates directly to this issue, I asked a question yesterday and while in fairness, the Minister of State, Deputy English, did his best, I do not think he got the point I was making. My point concerned the inclusion in the standards of the Bill for issues around tenancy management, nominations and allocations because it was a surprise to many of us that this was there. Is that an attempt to put some of those policies at one step removed from the Department and the local authorities and to create that sense of independence? Is that related to this discussion? If not, given that this Bill predates the reclassification issue, has there been any stress-testing of the provisions of the Bill in the context of the desire to get the AHBs back off-balance sheet? For example, was there consultation with the CSO? Is that even permissible under the rules? Was there consultation with the Department of Finance on whether the provisions of the Bill would make it easier or more difficult to achieve reclassification? I am thinking in particular of all of those areas where the new regulator will have to refer back to the Minister for consent, such as setting standards and the strategy.