Mr. Brian O'Gorman:

We are not doing a lot of it. This is mainly because there are other organisations that do it. We have done between 200 and 300. Interestingly, we are now on to our fourth or fifth buy-back, so four or five of the households in this situation are gradually picking themselves up and getting the means to buy back their properties. A mechanism is built into the mortgage-to-rent scheme which means that those people can resume homeownership if their means change. Generally, however, these are one-off properties and very dispersed. It is difficult for organisations like ours that tend to cluster developments in terms of maintenance costs, etc. It does not really fit. They are very expensive to maintain and manage. We always provide the same level of service, which means they are much more expensive for us to manage and maintain.

Deputy Ó Broin will probably have better knowledge of this than I do, but my understanding is that the problem has been diminishing over time as values have gone up and the economy has recovered. Initially, we were talking about something like 24,000, 25,000 or even 26,000 households being in arrears for more than two years. That number has continuously fallen in recent years.