Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Government is committed to this. It was an action in Rebuilding Ireland, whereby we would work with the Central Bank and Department of Finance to make this an option. Work was completed a year ago, in February 2018. The Central Bank made a recommendation about how credit unions could invest their available funding into the social housing sector. That has been provided for and work since that has been funded to try to develop the mechanisms to make that happen. Supported by funding assistance from my Department's innovation fund, work has been undertaken by the ICSH to support six of the larger approved housing bodies, AHBs, to access private finance.

This work is being undertaken by the ICSH in three phases, the first two of which, are designed to test the market interest in investing in social housing and the appetite among AHBs for private finance, have been completed. While the ICSH had hoped to complete the final phase of the work, focused on the structuring of SPVs, by late autumn last year, this work is ongoing. We had this discussion in late autumn of last year when we said it was nearly complete.

I understand that one of the issues that has given rise to the delay in concluding the work is the need to take account of other private finance arrangements and vehicles that certain AHBs have put in place in parallel. Three AHBs have been successful in accessing private finance from financial institutions to deliver new social housing. These financial institutions have their own specific requirements for lending and investing. One of the institutions included a requirement that the AHB concerned establish its own SPV, while the other two arrangements did not seek the establishment of such a vehicle, working instead through bilateral loan agreements with the AHBs. I expect that the ICSH will have concluded phase 3 of their work by end of quarter one this year. I certainly hope so because, like Deputy O'Brien, we would like to see the credit union money that is available being invested in social housing where it gives good value and can benefit projects. When we discussed this last autumn, I made it clear that the credit union sector was ready and available and had a vehicle ready for investment to happen and was engaged with the AHB sector to invest money.

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