Mr. Kieron Brennan:

To a large extent I agree with what Dr. McManus said, but I will add some points. First, Deputy Catherine Murphy asked about the voluntary code. It has been largely successful. It has governed the activities of most of the social housing stock. However, it is very limited in its application. It does not bestow many powers on the regulator, so this new Bill provides a deeper and more appropriate framework. We would very much welcome that.

In terms of upscaling, I echo what the last two speakers have said. A number of items are required for the social housing sector to make a leap forward. Regulation is one. Regulation is a requirement for any large-scale investor so they can have confidence in what is happening in the sector. The fact that it will be on a statutory basis should increase that confidence and should bring us to a position where we can look at other forms of finance which are put forward in the social housing strategy. Indeed, we welcome the strategy. It speaks in three or four sections about enhancing the capacity of social housing bodies, so it sets out an aspiration that the sector will be upscaled in terms of its capacity. Again, there are a number of issues around that. There is funding, which we have already mentioned, and regulation. There is also access to sites as non-State agencies. That must be put on some type of proper footing. Without knowledge of the availability of sites on which to build it is very hard to put a programme of work in place within a very short time frame, which is what we confront at present.

The other issue is co-ordination from the State side. We welcome the fact that the Department is reviewing its funding provisions for social housing, and they are improving. However, there is also the issue of co-ordination among State agencies. The average AHB must deal with quite a few. It must deal with the local authority under a number of headings, including planning as it is the housing authority and the allocator and nominator, the Housing Finance Agency, the Department, the Housing Agency and others, and it must deal with them repeatedly. A degree of co-ordination on the State side, with perhaps one agency taking the lead role in that regard, could take huge amounts of time out of the period necessary to produce housing, and we are anxious to produce as much as we can as quickly as possible.

Deputy Catherine Murphy also asked about the different tenures within co-operative housing. There are two main aspects to it, although we believe co-operative housing is for everybody regardless of their socioeconomic status. As a rule, Co-operative Housing Ireland manages social rented units, but in the past, and up to this day, we have assisted many people into co-operative ownership. Typically, what happens is that a group of people comes together and acquires a site, perhaps from the local council through the low cost sites scheme. Through their co-operative efforts they collectively produce housing at a lower cost and at less risk for themselves. Once complete, that housing would go into private ownership. Our organisation has assisted over 3,500 people to do that. We still do it, and we wish to continue doing it. Again, however, we believe it is something which must be enhanced and enabled with further assistance brought to it.

Deputy Dowds asked about the enabling aspect of the proposed regulatory arrangements before us. It is good that we are involved at an early stage on this. On the one hand one can fully understand why a new regulator would wish to set out its stall and gain what it would consider to be the appropriate powers. We wish to have appropriate, strong and independent regulation, but there must be some balance where the regulator has an enabling role. It is not just about protecting the asset and promoting security around tenure, it is also about the matters we have just been discussing. In other words, the regulator also has a role in enabling the entire social housing sector, not just by providing confidence but also by promoting standards and helping us all move to a place where we can aspire to do much more than we do today.