Mr. Mike Allen:

There was a big question about the offer from NAMA of social housing not being taken up by local authorities. That process is quite non-transparent so it is quite hard to give an answer. From the extent to which we are able to see what is going on, a number of those units are being offered. For example, we have had a lot of State investment to move away from having large concentrations of social housing in one place and to create multi-use and mixed communities. A number of the units that were being offered around the country were right beside or adjacent to existing areas of concentrated social housing or were built to a standard which the local authorities thought was suitable for selling to the private market but if which, if they were in their ownership, would result in extremely high maintenance costs. Both those decisions by local authorities to turn those down, to the extent that they are true and I do not know whether they explain the whole thing or not, are perfectly rational decisions. It is reasonable that local authorities should not be taking into public ownership large tranches of poorly built housing right beside existing high levels of social deprivation because we would be building problems for the future. While we want a clearer and faster process, I would be wary about putting pressure on local authorities higgledy piggledy just to accept these units.

Due to the fact that there is some development, partly through NAMA, of half-finished estates and so on, areas where local authorities were previously turning down units for social housing because of the high density of social housing use are now beginning to pick up in terms of owner-occupiers so if the local authorities take them up, they would be mixed tenure areas. That is opening up opportunities for some of these units which were correctly turned down before but which might be worth revisiting. I think that the Department has asked that they be revisited.