Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour) | Oireachtas source

On housing, the last time I met Mr. Ashmore was in Drogheda at a significant event in the context of capital investment and the enabling housing piece. ISIF is involved in an arrangement with the Housing Infrastructure Services Company and others to fund critical infrastructure to enable the development of several thousand new homes on the north side of Drogheda, one of the fastest growing areas in the country. That is quite typical of some of the indigenous investments that ISIF has undertaken that generate a long-term return for the State but manage to leverage other opportunities. Locally, we know how long it has taken to organise the development of that infrastructure. It is certainly not displacing any other investment. Essentially, this was the opportunity of last resort, not to put too fine a point on it, because many other funding opportunities were interrogated over the years. It is a very positive development from an economic and social point of view.

Accepting and understanding that Mr. Ashmore is limited in what he can say because the policy decision has not yet been taken on what form any prospective new sovereign wealth fund might take, given the anticipated scale of it in terms of accommodating significant surpluses over the next period, at a top level, based on international experience, would Mr. Ashmore give us a sense of what the breakdown might be in terms of indigenous versus international investment? ISIF is operating some international investments but the sense I have, although I have not seen its most recent annual report, is that the bulk of the investment is indigenous. Any new fund would be much more diversified, I think that would be fair to say. That is the trend.