Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 16 April 2014
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Environment, Culture and the Gaeltacht
EU Scrutiny Report and Future Priorities and Challenges: Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government
10:25 am
Mr. Michael Layde:
We are working very closely with the not-for-profit sector and have done so for decades. That work has intensified with the downturn. We are working very closely with them. We regularly meet the Irish Council for Social Housing and various subsets of same.
The housing policy statement issued by the Government in 2011 clearly outlined that there was going to be a new, expanded and dynamic role for the sector in terms of meeting social housing need which is what we have tried to evolve. We acknowledge the co-operation that we have received from the sector, in that regard. This issue is a challenge for them. As has been said by a number of commentators, we seek to do here what took a much longer period to evolve in other jurisdictions.