Mr. Paul Lemass:

I was halfway through Deputy Ó Broin's questions, so I might pick up on them before he has to leave. We were going to do a briefing note for the Deputy on the question of standards and the role of the AHB in performance management policy vis-à-vislocal authorities. We will come back to him on that.

We were on the question of the transfer of dwellings and the question of whether we would set up a fund in a similar way as was done with the credit unions. We have a range of different funds in place such as CAS, CALF and the CLSS. All of them include some form of a maintenance provision. This regulation is about safeguarding assets and tenants. On a case-by-case basis, there will be situations such as the one that arose in the Deputy's local authority. It will happen. Going the whole way to a fund would be broader than this legislation. It would be a policy matter so we would need to work it through in that way, but I would hope that as part of any transfer of assets, due regard would be had to the houses themselves and to the broader access an AHB might have to funding or other facilities or assets that could be used to support maintenance. That is as far as I would like to commit on it, other than to say that on a case-by-case basis it is something that could be looked at.

Deputy Ó Broin also mentioned section 47 and the language used for investment. The context here is the role that is defined for the regulator. There is no question of the regulator doing anything outside the scope of its role. The language has to be seen in that context. Part 2 deals with the role of the regulator. Anything the regulator will do thereafter in investigations or anything else, is in the context of that role. I would not see it going beyond that.