Mr. Kevin Johnson:

I have no problem taking that question. There were many questions there, so I will just touch on them and try to break them down. If we take the first point, there are some vehicles there, albeit they may reside outside of this jurisdiction. They would, however, qualify, so there is potential there. CUDA has been working on this for six years. It is pathetic, to be quite honest. Our concern was that we never wanted to do this by way of investment. I will make that clear again today. It is still not our preferred way. Our preferred way would be to amend the legislation to allow credit unions to lend for housing.

I referred to it in the document as an emergency because that is what we believe it is. We have a social housing problem but we also have a real affordable housing crisis. We see members of our credit unions, people who are doing essential work, who cannot afford to rent or buy a house. It is a bigger societal issue. It is not a society we would like to see existing now or in the future. For that reason, our belief is that we can prudently lend to support part of the solution. As I said, we do not necessarily believe it should be restricted to tier 3 AHBs. There are other co-operative housing initiatives that have proven very productive and fruitful over the years that we would like to be able to help.

That being said, much good work was done and regulations were brought in to allow the credit unions to invest in an approved vehicle that then lent to tier three 3 AHBs. There are a variety of solutions. It is not necessarily the AHBs themselves establishing a special purpose vehicle. There are other potential solutions. We have done quite a bit of work on this ourselves. This, however, is where the real problem comes in. There is little point in establishing and commencing such a vehicle if the projects are not there. For all the good potential reasons that exist, these things, unfortunately, are costly to establish and to run. There is little point in commencing something like that if we do not have the projects to be funded from it. That is where the real problem lies. I know all of the discussion is around setting up Irish collective asset management vehicles and special purpose vehicles. The real issue, however, is getting projects to take those funds. That is the real concern.