Mr. Kieron Brennan:

I thank members for their questions. I will begin and then I will call on my colleagues to respond.

Some of the questions shared a common theme. Members inquired about the capacity and size of approved housing bodies, AHBs. Deputy Casey mentioned that there are over 500 AHBs. There are 30,000 housing units between them all. That sounds like a big number but it is only one tenth the size of the local authority stock.

Let us be honest. AHBs will not solve the housing crisis on their own. They do not have the scale to do so but are willing to play their part. One of the reasons we are sitting here is that we are determined to do so.

We must admit that our capacity is an issue. We plan to deliver 6,000 units.

That is a growth level of 50% over the duration of the remainder of the housing plan, which I think we would all agree is considerable. We hope it will mean 6,000 families in new homes, something to which we should all aspire and which we should support. However, we would like to do a lot more. Everybody, including local authorities and approved housing bodies, AHBs, needs to be firing on all cylinders to sort this housing crisis. Although in the overall scheme of things we are not the major players, we can make a major contribution in our own right.

Within the Rebuilding Ireland plan and the social housing strategy issued prior to that, there are commitments to assist or develop the capacity of AHBs. Those commitments have not been acted upon in the proposals from Government, I am disappointed to say. I wish to draw the attention of the committee to this. The development of AHB capacity is a commitment that has not yet been acted upon. We have an issue with this.

Affordable housing is very much an issue for us and for society at large. While we at AHB and local authority level are providing social housing for those within the limits of the income threshold, there are a lot of people above that threshold who cannot provide for themselves in the private market and have no recourse. At least social housing tenants will end up on a scheme and may hopefully be catered for at some point. There is no scheme for those who are above the income threshold. There is a commitment in the various programmes issued over the past year that there will be an affordable scheme brought about. It has to happen in order to create a balanced and fair housing market. AHBs and particularly the four bodies before the committee today are very much open to playing their part. It requires a degree of subvention, however. By definition, we are talking about people who cannot wholly look after their own housing need. As a group, we have also made a submission to the Government as to how we would like to see the affordable option being brought forward. If we have time later we might discuss it.

In respect of NAMA, my own housing body, Co-operative Housing Ireland, has never refused an offer from it. We have accepted every offer it has made. We found NAMA good to work with and have done our best to deliver quickly on what it offers. If NAMA was to offer more, we would gladly consider it. This would generally be the experience of the AHBs before the committee today.

In terms of vacant units, unfortunately we cannot resort to compulsory purchase orders. It is the prerogative of the State-----