Mr. Billy Coman:

I am certainly not shooting down the Deputy; I am just telling him of my experience. I have seen situations where strong people within communities, who could afford to move, did move, despite the incentives that came with it. The tenant purchase scheme has been linked with that over many years. It affords people in communities - strong people - the opportunity to stay within that community but to own the home.

With regard to the incremental purchase scheme, I am convinced there are enough safeguards within that in terms of exclusions. The Deputy rightly asks why we should sell local authority stock at a time when we have a shortage of social housing. However, apart from that, we have to keep strong people who can afford it and who want to own their home, and we can provide for that, which is important. Nonetheless, within the scheme there are quite a number of exclusions that can be applied. For example, one could exclude all the one-beds because, in terms of homelessness, single units are the biggest category of need. An area we should be looking at is the number of social housing units which have two, three or four bedrooms but only one person living in them. We must examine the provision of step-down accommodation in regard to offering a very safe and secure place for people of a like mind, who are happy to move closer to services, public transport and shopping. I believe that will free up some stock.