Mr. Declan Dunne:

I agree. What is the focus of this entire thing? It is about providing a housing solution that is affordable for people who find themselves in the situation where the price of private rental is far too high, they cannot afford to buy a house and their income is above the social housing level. The test of the success of this will be whether or not it provides for those people. That is our objective and what we are trying to achieve. My opening statement referred to the challenges faced by a high percentage of people who are unable to rent or buy on average incomes, and who do not have access to social housing. That is what we are trying to achieve. Everything we do is done in partnership with local authorities. Whether it is social or cost rental, our first point of call is the local authority. We discuss the housing need and demand in the area and what the local authority wants us to do and where we can help. We do not see ourselves as the primary mover in housing in Ireland. Local authorities develop the development plan, it is the planning and housing authority in that county, and our role is to assist when invited and when it is helpful for them to have us there.

For the people who live in those counties, whose rent we are trying to address, we are trying to match two things, namely what they can afford to pay and how we can drive the cost down as far as we possibly can, through reducing our own costs around housing management, buying at the best price, buying at fixed prices and using modern construction methods. AHBs have been involved in modular house building in 2D and 3D designs and we are trying to do this. There is no doubt we can improve on it and that we want to improve on it but we do work with the private sector, and we drive as hard a bargain as we can. My organisation has 1,366 homes in construction. That means we have the skill set to be able to tell the private sector that we know what we are doing; we know the costs, we know what we pay and we will only pay the absolute minimum.

The Senator has raised the issue of the real challenge, which is the gap between the cost of housing and land in Ireland and what people can afford to pay. We are trying to close that gap as much as we possibly can and clearly there is more work to do.