Mr. Kieron Brennan:

On the timing of responses, once we receive completed units we must first pay for them. As the repayments kick in straight away, it is in our interests to ensure the units are filled. In our case, and I believe it to also be the case with most approved housing bodies, all of the nominations for allocations that we would take come from the local authority. If we have units coming on board, we approach the local authority - which is aware because it would have given approvals and so on - and we let the local authority know that we have, for example, ten new units and that we need ten, or more, nominations. Some of the units may not be accepted by the people involved. We depend, to a degree, on local authorities in that respect but this process would always happen in co-operation with the local authority. By and large, much as we do not or cannot tolerate much in the way of voids or empty units among our stock, neither can we tolerate unfilled homes. For financial reasons we must fill them.