Mr. Kevin Kelly:

In an overall context, I have been a long time in local government and it has become more complex.

There are more elements to all areas of service delivery now that require additional human resources. My understanding is that we made a submission looking for 20 staff and we were allocated 11 based on, I suppose, the distribution across local authorities. We have to remember - this has been pointed out in previous discussions - that those 11 staff are new. There were zero staff previously because there was no housing construction programme. Following the recession, capital housing teams were run down to nothing. The emphasis was on maintenance, estate management, allocations, etc. Effectively, there are 11 staff. They are not additional to an existing complement. The reason for the number is the amount of work to be done over a short period and, as already outlined, the number of schemes that we are advancing at any particular point. If we are building three schemes to deliver 1,000 houses, maybe one would not need as many. However, we have many different strands, streams and Government initiatives under that overall social and affordable housing programme to deliver, and, as a result,, every one of those is required.

We outlined at the outset that, in spite of our best efforts, we have not been able to put all 11 staff in place yet. We are at, Mr. Gilligan says, six. I hope it is around eight or nine.