Pat Casey (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

This is just another reason people have lost faith in the ability of this House to deal with the single biggest crisis facing us, the housing crisis. The credit unions have had billions available for a number of years to invest in the delivery of social and affordable housing. The Tánaiste discussed this with me previously at committee. It took over three years for the Central Bank to approve this funding to deliver social housing and we are now one year on from that. The off-balance sheet model that was deemed possible to allow the credit unions to invest in social housing has been proven to be on-balance sheet, and all approved housing bodies are on-balance sheet. Until we deal with the bureaucracy that is stopping us finding the solutions for people out there, we are wasting our time. We have billions available; all we need is a model. We have been talking about this model for years. When is it going to arrive?

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