Mr. Ned Brennan:

I will give a simple example of how funding works. If a person buying a house for €100,000 is given a CALF subsidy of 20% which would be €20,000, the person would have to raise a loan of €80,000. If the house is in a rural town where the average rents are €500 a month for a three-bedroom semi-detached house, there would not be enough there to raise €80,000 so there is going to be a gap between the State subsidy and what the person can borrow. The voluntary sector can only take up that gap to a limited extent in that its balance sheet can only bear a certain amount of borrowings. That is where the difficulty lies. A Government guarantee would take the risk out of that gap of money and it would allow us to be able to develop more, knowing that we would be able to keep the thing moving at a sustainable level. The difficulty at the moment is that we are taking all the risk. We are going from a situation seven years ago where we had no risk - we were 100% capital funded - to today virtually taking on the whole risk. As charities we cannot take on that risk to that extent. We have to be more cautious in how we do our dealings and as a result of that caution we cannot really develop the same number as was possible previously. We have a strategic policy of delivering or looking for sites or developing housing in areas where there is the highest need, such as in the Cork city area, along the east coast and in the counties of Kildare and Meath.

On the question about the European Investment Bank, certainly the sector has the capacity to deliver. In 2009 RESPOND! had 1,200 houses or units under construction. We have the capacity and the technical capability to be able to deliver in that we have our own in-house engineers, technicians and architects. The funding piece of the cake is missing at the moment. We have the capacity to be able to deliver and we have the capacity and the experience to ramp up and start delivering again very quickly but without the State support in providing that safeguard or lifeline we cannot take on that level of risk.

With regard to voids we have a fairly quick turnaround and we do not have the same number or percentage of voids. Of course we are a much younger and newer sector so our houses do not probably need as much work as local authority houses may need when they are being re-let.

With all respect to Dr. Norris, all the talk about structures is window dressing. We have delivered in the past and we will be able to deliver in the future. The idea of having the structures right is only window dressing. We can deliver but the question is whether the Government will put that model together to support the sector in delivering more houses to those people who are in need in our society.