Mr. Brendan McDonagh:

We do not hold the houses. They are held by our debtors. A total of 6,500 units were offered to the housing agency and the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government, which had discussions with local authorities around the country and only 2,500 were deemed acceptable. Sometimes the decision took so long that the debtor wanted to sell the houses. We could not hold them back any longer and had to sell them. On other occasions they were rejected. The main reason for rejection seems to come down to the fact that the local authority and the housing agency, which is part of the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, deemed there to be an over-concentration of social housing in that area. The last time we discussed this was before the Committee of Public Accounts, PAC. The County and City Management Association issued a statement afterwards saying many of the houses were unsuitable or were not built in accordance with regulations, or whatever the case was. That was the case for some of the houses but as I said at that PAC meeting, we have remediated many of the problems through working with local authorities on site resolution plans to make those houses accord with the regulations. When we offer them the local authorities have to tell us they want them, then they have to start engaging with the debtor to sell them to the housing agency or local authority, or to us so that we can lease them back to the housing agency. The main reason was the over-concentration of social housing.