Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I have met a number of the organisations behind the funds to explore how this might work. At least one of them is now an approved housing body as well. The one in which David Hall is involved, for example, applied to become an approved housing body and it believes it can raise sufficient capital with very modest rates of returns. The business model will be something along the lines that a local authority will agree to effectively lease a property under a normal leasing arrangement for 20 years with an option to renew after 20 years. The security of tenure for people in these properties should be more or less the same as a normal social housing tenant in a long-term tenancy arrangement. In the case of approved housing bodies that look to State to partially fund acquisitions, that is a slightly different model. There is a third model whereby funds seek to invest in social housing, knowing that the State will give a guaranteed rent for a long time. They will be looking for low levels of returns with very high security, which is a classic pension fund-type model. We have asked the Housing Agency to work through these models with the different people and organisations concerned and then we will choose the ones we will deal with. From my experience of the organisations we have met, they all have pretty altruistic motives in this respect.. This is not a vulture fund-type set-up; they are organisations that have been set up to try to improve and provide more social housing and to put in place a long-term funding arrangement to facilitate that.

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