Mr. Barry O'Leary:

A lot of work has been done in the past two years by the Department's social housing strategy group in looking at new funding models. The reality is that we have seen other State entities struggle in the past two years to get off the balance sheet. It is a very difficult task, given that the European Union is making it more difficult by the month to get things off balance sheet. What we are saying is the State should, by all means, pursue the issue in the future and, if it is successful, that will be terrific. However, in the meantime, it should build the houses needed. If it wanted to sell local authority houses at some point, something some people might not like, or transfer them to some other vehicle, that would be terrific, but at that stage they would have been built.