Mr. Jim Baneham:

On the cost-rental tenant in situ scheme, I refer to the table of information we gave the committee, which summarises a number of different schemes. With regard to the number of homes that have been purchased, it was 188 at the time we assembled the data. We had accepted bids on 53. The total recommendations we have received from local authorities back on 19 May was 472. There is another cohort of applications that are still going through the system, as in we will be assessing whether they are eligible. That is a rough overview of the numbers coming through that scheme, which has been operational since 1 April 2023.

Other aspects of the question go back to the transfer of properties to AHBs. There was a legislative issue which prevented that happening, but that has been addressed in the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2024, which was passed by the Oireachtas in December of last year. The challenge we have with the properties we have acquired and the homes we are effectively landlord to is the very diverse nature of those properties. They are all over the country. They were built at different times and have different rents in place, going from as low as €400 a month to about €2,200 a month. There is a very big range of different types of properties.

On cost rental, from an AHB perspective, part of the requirements of the legislation is to set out your plan for the next 40 years as to how you are going to manage, maintain and operate each property. That is relatively straightforward when you have a new apartment block or housing scheme. It is a pretty complicated process when you have such a diverse range of properties. At the inception of the scheme, the diversity of the types of properties-----