Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 23 January 2024

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government

Update on Affordable Homes, Public Lands, Strategic Planning and Projects: Land Development Agency

Mr. John Coleman:

I think so. Our debt strategy is essentially that debt is too expensive for us right now. Debt can be part of our capital structure. We are allowed borrow up to €1.25 billion but right now it does not make sense. Once the rent roll from cost rental proves itself, becomes consistent and builds to a level, off the back of that the Senator is correct that we would be able to borrow on the market, rather than just looking for additional equity contributions. That is something we are keeping live. We have a debt strategy in review, which will involve scenario analysis. Much commentary now is that debt will loosen towards the end of this year and into next year. We are looking at that closely to see if there are any opportunities but we intend to meet the majority of our needs for the foreseeable future by the equity injections we get from the Government. They are critical to us. We will never be able to borrow massive amounts of debt. We want to be lowly geared and not to create any situations whereby we could cause ourselves problems by being over-indebted into the future. We will take a prudent approach based on the opportunity available in the markets in the years ahead.