Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Okay. On leasing, our colleague said that leasing is better than being in emergency accommodation. That is true, but I cannot for the life of me understand, when completed new developments are on the market, why our local authorities, including mine recently, end up leasing rather than buying them, when we have all this money available. It is self-evidently better value for the public and gives long-term security for the tenants when the local authorities buy those developments. We should be buying a lot of them because it is a one-off investment and every single one that is bought is money saved in the long run in terms of HAP and RAS. Why would we do leasing when we can do purchase? Will the Government ramp up the purchasing of completed new developments to get a saving of more than 10% on a much bigger scale than is currently the case? That would give some quick gains.