Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 3 March 2022

Public Accounts Committee

2020 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Home Building Finance Ireland - Financial Statements 2020

9:30 am

Ms Dara Deering:

That is no problem. As I said to the Deputy's colleague, we will give a breakdown. I have one but if I were to give it now, I would have to read out the figures on a county-by-county basis and I am sure the Deputy does not want me to use up time. We will send the information to the committee. I will also show the Deputy the number of applications we have received per county. This relates to one of the challenges. To get them to approval, we need to see more applications.

To get more applications, we have a role to play of course, as the Chairman said, in making sure there is awareness that we exist. We want to fund schemes in every county. The second challenge, however, which I cannot solve, in HBFI relates to viability. Some of the reason for that housebuilding not happening cannot be solved by finance. Of course, we would love to see more applications but we are seeing limited applications in the counties in which we have not funded. Part of our role is to ensure people know we exist if building can happen in those areas and finance is constrained.