Ms Fiona Cormican:

Clúid Housing, like Respond, does a lot of its own construction programme where we do not have any developers involved. We get the site either through an expressions of interest, EOIs, from a local authority, we appoint the design team and the contractor, build directly and manage that. Around a third of our projects are our own construction and we like it because we get the quality we want in the locations we want. However, managing construction projects under the general conditions of contract, GCC, contract is very onerous, and not only that but also we have to cash flow those projects, because once you are in a contract, you have to pay when the payment date is due. We spend around €15 million per month, and we can go as high as €15 million in a month in terms of cash flow in construction projects. That is what limits us from doing it. If we could do 100% construction, we would be delighted to, but that is a huge amount of money to have to pay out monthly to manage that. That money comes back in but very often we have to front-fund it. That is one reason we do not do it.

The other reason is we try to keep a balance of 50:50 between our own construction programme, which includes the projects Mr. Dunne outlined where we buy a site from a developer and they finish out the site, and developer turnkey for the very simple reason of deliverability. There is a limited amount of construction we can deliver. The developer turnkey will deliver them and we pay for them at the end. We are trying to keep that balance all the time between the two. In fact during Covid-19, our own construction programme was the one that delivered because all the developers were off site whereas all our construction programmes got a derogation from the Government and we were able to deliver. A pipeline is a pipeline and it moves all the time, but even though our pipeline look likes it is two thirds developer turnkey, that will change as our projects get planning permission and come through the process, and that will become more of a balance - about 50:50 into the future. Does that answer Senator Fitzpatrick's question?