Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The difficulty is that if an investment fund buys an apartment block, for example, it is buying an apartment block which is almost fully tenanted because the value lies in the fact the tenants are paying rent. If they were to help in resolving the housing crisis, they would need to be buying vacant properties. They do not look for vacant possession because of, as we can see, the adverse implications of that.

If there was a supply of vacant housing, local authorities should certainly apply that for social housing. However, the supply of vacant and available property is limited. NAMA has some vacant and available supply and offered that to local authorities. Sometimes local authorities do not have money, so NAMA has a kind of special purpose vehicle that leases property to a local authority on a 20-year basis. I believe it is leasing approximately 1,600 houses on that basis currently and there may be further potential in this regard. The CPO route acquires property at market value from an unwilling vendor. NAMA is not an unwilling vendor but wants to sell what it has at market value.

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