Ms Geraldine Tallon:

We had quite a difficult situation with affordable housing when the crash happened. The provision of affordable housing and measures to increase supply had been a strong policy focus between 2004 and 2006 in particular. Supply was increased in that period, but by the end of 2009, there was a residue of unsold affordable housing within the local government system. At that stage, we had 3,700 unsold affordable housing units on the books. We also had other units in the process of being provided, so there was an additional delivery of 480 affordable housing units in 2010 and a further 84 units in 2011. In essence, we had more than 4,000 unsold affordable housing units in the system.

Local authorities and the Department have had to take a pragmatic view as far as the use of affordable housing is concerned. Our main approach has been to seek to transfer the housing units across to social leasing, that is, the provision of the houses to approved housing bodies for onward leasing. Approximately 2,200 of the unsold affordable units have been absorbed into the social leasing scheme. In areas where houses were not attractive or where we could not make a match in terms of social leasing, we have transferred those units into the main housing programme, that is, they have been transferred to local authority ownership. Effectively, they have been bought as part of the social housing stock. There are approximately 600 units which fall into that category. A small number of sales of affordable housing units have continued to happen also. At this stage, taking account of the numbers of units that are now in social leasing schemes, transferred to the social housing investment programme or sold, we have approximately 600 unsold affordable housing units still in the system.