Mr. Sean O'Connor:

It is on our minds. A few years ago, the Central Statistics Office, CSO, and EUROSTAT rubber-stamped and put us on the balance sheet. Clearly, there are big advantages for the State. We seem to be an outlier in Ireland in that the sector is on the balance sheet. There is a reference to it in Housing for All, which is good. I would like to see a more proactive approach to it. It is quite complicated to get us off the balance sheet again and is largely to do with control.

The State has to accept the type of agents we are. There is often confusion about whether we are public, private or voluntary. All of those can be bunged at us as insults. We are one or the other. We know what we are. We are entrepreneurial, voluntary sector, not-for-profit organisations that only deal in houses and providing homes for people. That is our long-term policy objective and what we are in the business for. It is a good thing.

If we can help the State with our borrowings, which are not insubstantial - the balance sheet value of the sector is not insubstantial - and if it can be moved off the State's balance sheet, that is more money for local authority housing, hospitals, roads or whatever it is. Where it happened elsewhere in Northern Ireland, it was tackled very quickly.