James Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail)

Some local authorities are delivering a significant amount of affordable housing but others are finding it hard to meet the criteria, in a sense. Where houses are of a certain level, when they work out the cost of an affordable purchase the difference is not there to make a substantial difference to individual families. We will continue to keep those limits under review. What I have been doing in terms of analysis in recent months is trying to ensure that every individual and family in the country can get somewhere to call a home, based on their income. That might be social housing, cost rental, affordable purchase or they might be able to do it without any supports. We want to ensure that people meet the criteria. There are probably a number of counties across the country where local authorities are struggling to make the affordable purchase scheme work for some families. They are above the social housing threshold but the limits on affordable housing mean it is not viable for those families either, in that the differential is very small versus the actual market price for the homes. I am looking at that again. I had that situation in my own county until recently. One could call it a bad thing, but house prices were going up and that made it a bit more viable for the affordable housing scheme. A lot of midland counties are in that situation, so we are looking at it.