Mr. Brendan McDonagh:

It is 926 as of last Friday. If we can sign contracts, we will achieve well over 1,000 by the end of the year. We cannot control the full picture. We have to rely on local authorities, housing agencies and approved housing bodies to sign the contracts. We have very good engagement with them. We have a standardised lease which everybody now understands. We are not wasting money trying to negotiate a separate lease for every housing body, and therefore everybody knows with what they are dealing. Things can happen very quickly.

We offered almost 5,500 units, but only 2,100 have been accepted. Over 1,000 will be delivered by the end of this year and currently 500 are under consideration. Some units were rejected because things were slow to get going as the approved housing bodies were typically used to getting capital funding to buy units. However, given that the Government is in constrained circumstances, money cannot be given to buy capital but rather for long-term leases. That changed everybody's circumstances and people had to adjust.

About 1,200 units were sold or rented in the private sector while local authorities and approved housing bodies were making up their minds about whether they wanted them. We cannot hold things up because there is demand for housing in the market. About 1,700 units were rejected because they were the wrong type of product or in the wrong location, or local authorities and approved housing bodies felt they had an over-exposure in a particular area. I have been told that the rule of thumb is to have a maximum of 20% of social housing in a particular area.