Mr. Kieron Brennan:

I will make a contribution. I am sure some of my colleagues will do likewise. I will begin by answering Deputy Ó Broin's question about additionality in the context of the availability of HFA assistance. The HFA provides a pretty good product at a good rate. We have to allow for that. We would not be sure that it will necessarily be available into the future. In the interests of having a workable market, it is better to have more than one good supplier of a product - finance, in this case - in the market. I would welcome the possibility of credit union funding for all sorts of reasons. It is not just about the funds themselves. It would be a great example of social finance doing what it should do in a particular local area. It would be a huge win for local authorities, the State and ourselves. We can all combine to provide housing for people who badly need it.

It is clear that credit union finance would be off the balance sheet. We are off the balance sheet at the moment. It is possible that this will change because we are under assessment by the CSO and EUROSTAT in this context. We have been communicating with the various authorities involved. We have been making our case fairly strongly. The Irish Council for Social Housing is working hard on that. We hope we will remain off the balance sheet. When the AHBs in the UK ended up on the balance sheet, one of the issues was that the regulation was deemed to be so intrusive that it amounted to State control. I think that has been factored into the regulation Bill that has been mentioned and will be introduced this month.

The wider question of regulation arises in this context. The word "proliferation" was used by someone when speaking about the number of AHBs. There are approximately 500 AHBs. As Deputy Mattie McGrath mentioned earlier, the vast majority of them are small, locally based entities that were established through local initiative to deal with a particular problem in a village or community. Those who put AHBs in place, drew down funding and have continued to manage those bodies must be applauded. They will continue to operate in this way. Most of them do not have the ambition to expand to deal with the particular issue of the general housing crisis. Since those days, more recently it has become extremely difficult to establish a new AHB. I understand that no new AHB has been established since the rules were changed a number of years ago. Regulation has increased significantly, as the members of the committee will be aware. Like all developing AHBs, we must sign up to the code of conduct with the regulator. We are heavily regulated. When the new legislation comes in, it will put additional requirements on us.

As Deputy Casey mentioned earlier, tier 3 might be called the ultimate level of regulation. All of the housing bodies represented at this meeting are tier 3 AHBs, which are bodies that have more than 300 units. All of us have significantly more than that. We are deemed to be suitable for increased regulatory attention because we are developing, borrowing and taking on judicial responsibilities.

Cathal Callan has spoken of Clúid's level of borrowing - €350 million - going forward. If a lender is to lend into that situation, such as the credit unions may be, they would want to ensure that those entities are properly regulated and that the systems to which Cathal referred are in place. We welcome the additional regulation that will result, on a statutory basis, hopefully after the enactment of the Bill to be introduced this year. All of this is good.

With regard to representation, in general, approved housing bodies do their best to respond to representatives, be they Deputies, councillors at local level or council officials when they raise issues with us. Yesterday I was invited to a local authority strategic policy committee. I sat down and answered all the questions and addressed all the issues that the committee members had to deal with. We would do this on an ongoing basis.

As Co-operative Housing Ireland, CHI, is a co-operative, our members own and control our organisation. The majority of our members, be they at local co-operative level or at national board level - which I report to - are tenant members of our houses. They are elected, they control us and they keep us accountable. We are pleased with this structure.

Reference was made to the responses.