Mr. Justin O'Brien:

That is affirming and I want to recognise that. I was trying to express that earlier in terms of saying we are primarily housing providers, so that is where the resources go. It is true that, in the context of local authorities, rents go into the central fund. There have been issues where some stock has not been well maintained over the years. On a very important point, however, under the regulation code we must have asset management in place that is verifiable and is signed off on by our board, and we have to adhere to that and make provision for it financially. Therefore, there are strictures on what we can and cannot do.

Sharing expertise is important and we would be very open to it. It is not that we are the best boys in town all the time and that we know everything. People work in different contexts and it would be very good to get that sharing of expertise. For people working in our sector, there is relatively more insecurity, particularly for housing bodies which are starting off - before they get reasonable economies of scale - as compared to local authorities. People have sometimes gone from the AHB, sector into the local authority system and there is now a bit of transfer the other way, which is very good. It would be good to look at enhanced learning through the SPCs. It is a question of what works and what does not work in a local area, and how learning on this can be translated for the common purpose of shared intelligence. I believe that would be sensible for each SPC to undertake.

The context for nomination and selection is that we are getting the top people on the list from the local authority. Rather than doing what they do in the UK, where they simply take people, the housing body is trying to get a balance within its scheme. The waiting list is sometimes very blunt so what we always try to do is get a mix of ages of children and of adults, and of working and non-working people, so they are not all lumped together. There has been experience, particularly in Dublin and the urban areas, where some schemes were overloaded with the same category of person. This has had disastrous social consequences because the communities became unbalanced and were socially deprived and then became very difficult to manage. Some effort has been made in this regard. We are not trying to cherry-pick, to use a word that is often said about us. My approach is that we are trying to get a balanced community within the 20 units or 50 units - whatever the figure is - so there is some vibrancy within that community. I do not know if that gives Deputy Canney some clarification of the question he asked.