Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I spoke at the recent annual general meeting in the Ashling Hotel about making sure that as we move forward with this new regulation we do so in a way that is mindful of the different sizes and capacities of the housing bodies. I absolutely want to see how we can get some of the large tier 3 housing bodies, with 300 units more, to increase their ambitions and scale. I am not sure whether that would require amalgamations. We might have to bring in a housing body from abroad that has more experience of working on a bigger scale such as those in the United Kingdom to help.

I completely take the Deputy's point about the good work being done by the tier 1 and 2 housing bodies that are dealing with few units but with people who have very particular needs. We want to make sure they can continue to deliver their supports. I also take the Deputy's point about making sure the regulation is not going too hard as the UK regulatory system did. We are considering other models.

Following meetings with the Housing Finance Agency, the Housing Agency and others I know there is a need to leverage more finance into this sector. We can only do that with appropriate regulations but we can only do that in a way that will not undermine these housing bodies in the long term.

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