Dr. Donal McManus:

I wish to address Deputy Gould's point about the mystery of the AHBs having more resources, and Deputy Ó Broin can reinforce this point. I will just reflect that there have been two different funding mechanisms over the years. AHBs never got access to the remedial works scheme in local authority areas. The Deputies know this because they were both councillors. We had a plan over the 30 years. We did not have any real work schemes but plans funded through rents over time. We are funded differently, and we had a plan for the long term. We also kept stock, whereas the idea with local authorities was sometimes to sell off the stock. There is a different mindset. The AHB sector is very much into managing long term, but we never got those big healthy grants under the remedial work schemes over the years. We had to rely on charging rents to pay for repairs and maintenance. We have quite a few legacy issues now where rents have not covered those costs.

On the mortgage-to-rent issue, a small cohort of AHBs is doing mortgage-to-rent properties, but the number has fallen in recent years, as was mentioned. Many AHBs are moving into more work at scale. There is a need for mortgage-to-rent schemes, but it has not had the same numbers involved as it probably had three or four years ago. I just reinforce the fact that we are funded differently than the local authorities and so we have to plan long-term. We do not have access to the remedial works scheme and we have legacy issues with older stock that we will have to address in future.