Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 19 January 2023

Public Accounts Committee

Financial Statements 2020: Housing Agency
Financial Statements 2021: Approved Housing Bodies Regulatory Authority
Chapter 7: Housing Agency Revolving Acquisition Fund
Section 2 Report – Unauthorised Release of Funds from the Central Fund of the Exchequer

9:30 am

Mr. Jim Baneham:

Again, just to explain the concept of the caretaker lease, we had two options when we started the process. We could have bought the properties and waited to sell them to the AHBs. The Housing Agency, though, is not a housing authority and we do not have big infrastructure that would allow us to maintain and operate properties across the country. We are just not that type of body. The other option was to allow the AHBs, before they bought the properties, to enter those properties and start working on them to make them ready for people to occupy. The purpose of the caretaker lease was to get people moved into properties sooner than if we were waiting ourselves to sell them on.