Mr. Nick Ashmore:

The challenge with trying to do that within a commercial structure is that we have to avoid state aid. We must be explicit that the investment returns we are making are commercial, that other commercial investors would make and seek the same risk adjusted returns. It gets challenging as regards the viability when we get down to social and affordable housing. There is any number of commercial investors who would love to own big portfolios of social homes, but they will be making a commercial return from them and that is money. Social homes will be provided in good condition but the State would be paying a profit to those investors as part of that. An element of the logic of the State or AHBs owning social housing makes sense. There are a number of different ways of delivering social and affordable housing and there are quite a few agencies involved in that. Another branch of the National Treasury Management Agency, NTMA, is the National Development Finance Agency, NDFA. It is involved in and manages public-private partnership, PPP, projects. It is now managing a sequence of different bundles of social homes that are being built using the PPP process.

The risk and the financing of the construction of those homes is outsourced to a third party investor and manager that delivers the homes for a period, at the end of which the homes, having been fully maintained, are transferred into the ownership of the State. The State does not have to put up the money for those homes or finance them during the 25-year period. That is another model for the delivery of social housing. It does involve the markets. We do not get involved because it is not an area in which finance is lacking. There are plenty of market participants and we would displace them if we were to invest in those properties. There are a number of different ways to achieve that objective but it is a policy matter-----