Mr. Barra Roantree:

A few questions were asked, including by Deputy Casey, about how to find a sustainable model for the financing of housing development that can be sustained through a downturn and if there was a hit on revenues. There is a whole set of reasons that can limit the ability of local authorities and approved housing bodies to build. One of the aspects that has been highlighted by Michelle Norris of UCD, among others, is the fact that rents received by councils are often extremely low in a lot of counties because they are capped by the differential rent scheme in a county. Maybe this is in the background but it interacts a lot with how to get approved housing bodies or local authorities to be able to finance housing. If their revenue stream is very restricted by a very low capped rent, they will not be able to raise the finance themselves. If the rents do not even cover the cost of maintenance, it will be difficult to get them to invest and it reduces their incentives in that regard. That is one set of issues that fall under the committee's remit in terms of looking to see if something can be done with the differential rent schemes that operate around the country currently. Perhaps the schemes are not particularly coherent across counties. The definition of "income" differs a lot and the ways in which people's means are assessed for the schemes can differ wildly. This is probably the one thing that often falls under the radar but is important when we are thinking of ways to build the finance model that can sustain housing throughout.