Results 3,801-3,820 of 5,632 for speaker:Paul McAuliffe

Public Accounts Committee: 2020 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Home Building Finance Ireland - Financial Statements 2020 (3 Mar 2022)

Paul McAuliffe: I thank Ms Deering for her statement and the Comptroller and Auditor General for his reports. I do not want to paraphrase what Ms Deering said, but I will focus on one line where she said the HBFI identified gaps in the existing fund available to creditors and did so in an efficient and rigorous way. I am thinking back to the development of the HBFI. In many ways, many of the new policy...

Public Accounts Committee: 2020 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Home Building Finance Ireland - Financial Statements 2020 (3 Mar 2022)

Paul McAuliffe: I want to focus on the HBFI's move away from focusing on that idea of small to medium sized towards the momentum fund, which I will discuss. Does Ms Deering regard that as mission creep or as identifying another gap in the market?

Public Accounts Committee: 2020 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Home Building Finance Ireland - Financial Statements 2020 (3 Mar 2022)

Paul McAuliffe: Okay. I will come back to that. Clearly, the HBFI has not seen the success in drawdowns for those smaller projects that it might have. Of almost €395 million approved facilities, the drawdown has just been approximately €37 million, which is 10%. I am trying to get to the bottom of why that is happening in the market so I can understand it from a policy perspective. I can...

Public Accounts Committee: 2020 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Home Building Finance Ireland - Financial Statements 2020 (3 Mar 2022)

Paul McAuliffe: As the HBFI heads into year three, was 10% of total approvals a target it hoped to exceed?

Public Accounts Committee: 2020 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Home Building Finance Ireland - Financial Statements 2020 (3 Mar 2022)

Paul McAuliffe: Yes.

Public Accounts Committee: 2020 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Home Building Finance Ireland - Financial Statements 2020 (3 Mar 2022)

Paul McAuliffe: Unfortunately, I am all too aware of that.

Public Accounts Committee: 2020 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Home Building Finance Ireland - Financial Statements 2020 (3 Mar 2022)

Paul McAuliffe: My question was, if the HBFI was starting on day one of the facility, would it have seen a 10% drawdown as a failure?

Public Accounts Committee: 2020 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Home Building Finance Ireland - Financial Statements 2020 (3 Mar 2022)

Paul McAuliffe: Let us try to dig down into some of the reasons for the figure. Are people as ready as they could be when they come to the HBFI? For example, does planning permission need to be in place in advance of applications being made?

Public Accounts Committee: 2020 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Home Building Finance Ireland - Financial Statements 2020 (3 Mar 2022)

Paul McAuliffe: This is to help me in my work on the housing committee as much as anything else. We are speaking in very general terms. I am trying to get to the bottom of what those delays in drawdown are. I accept that Covid was an issue, although less so on the social housing side, and I hear what Ms Deering is saying about issues in legal transfers and so on. Have the witnesses examined why they have...

Public Accounts Committee: 2020 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Home Building Finance Ireland - Financial Statements 2020 (3 Mar 2022)

Paul McAuliffe: The HBFI has not done any research on what the reasons might be for the applications in front of it-----

Public Accounts Committee: 2020 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Home Building Finance Ireland - Financial Statements 2020 (3 Mar 2022)

Paul McAuliffe: -----or categorised them.

Public Accounts Committee: 2020 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Home Building Finance Ireland - Financial Statements 2020 (3 Mar 2022)

Paul McAuliffe: Does Ms Deering see that drawdown increasing? She mentioned the figure of 57%. From the perspective of value for money for the taxpayer, I am looking at a cost base in 2020 of €5.7 million and drawdowns of €37 million. Those numbers do not make for a good ratio. I want to see a pipeline of more rapid draw down.

Public Accounts Committee: 2020 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Home Building Finance Ireland - Financial Statements 2020 (3 Mar 2022)

Paul McAuliffe: I absolutely hear that, but let me give an analogy. There is a fisherman on a lake and it is very hard getting the fish. He has to cover his costs. He is there all day and is not getting the rewards he wants so he develops a new tool called the momentum fund that lets him fish in a barrel. My worry about the momentum fund is that is a huge allocation - 40% of the overall fund, if I am...

Public Accounts Committee: 2020 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Home Building Finance Ireland - Financial Statements 2020 (3 Mar 2022)

Paul McAuliffe: Were there any indications in the market at that time that large-scale developers would have a restriction on credit because of Covid?

Public Accounts Committee: 2020 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Home Building Finance Ireland - Financial Statements 2020 (3 Mar 2022)

Paul McAuliffe: Did the predictions of that market research come to pass? Was there a restriction on credit in the market?

Public Accounts Committee: 2020 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Home Building Finance Ireland - Financial Statements 2020 (3 Mar 2022)

Paul McAuliffe: Was the HBFI's rate more preferential than the ones they could get in the market?

Public Accounts Committee: 2020 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Home Building Finance Ireland - Financial Statements 2020 (3 Mar 2022)

Paul McAuliffe: I still think 40% was a huge allocation for a temporary measure. That seems to go beyond the initial idea of identifying small to medium-sized projects. We are short on time but I want to get to the issue of performance-related pay. I am sure it is a matter that the HBFI wants to address too. There have not been allocations in these accounts. Is that something Ms Deering envisages...

Public Accounts Committee: 2020 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Home Building Finance Ireland - Financial Statements 2020 (3 Mar 2022)

Paul McAuliffe: Who are the decision-makers in that governance structure?

Public Accounts Committee: 2020 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Home Building Finance Ireland - Financial Statements 2020 (3 Mar 2022)

Paul McAuliffe: I fully accept that people should be rewarded or remunerated. It is very important that we do not stifle creativity and so on. However, to go back to the fish-in-a-barrel analogy I made earlier, I would not like that quick fix to release 40% of the funds and get them out there to meet targets to be used as a basis of performance-related pay when the real goal is to support small and...

Public Accounts Committee: 2020 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Home Building Finance Ireland - Financial Statements 2020 (3 Mar 2022)

Paul McAuliffe: We need all types of housing. I agree with that.