Will the Minister include a facility for local authorities to buy into stock houses which they are obliged to repossess because householders have been unable to maintain their repayments under the HFA loans? In the Dublin city area the local authority are repossessing approximately 20 houses a year and they are being sold for a pittance — £12,000, £13,000 or £14,000. These houses could be used to rehouse people on the corporation housing list.

It is something one could consider, but there is a continuing high vacancy rate in the city. At the last count, before Christmas, about 700 dwellings were vacant and 160 of them were in the inner city area. I note the point the Deputy is making but it is very hard to authorise the buying of secondhand, even new, houses in areas where we already have housing stock surplus to our requirements.

Would the Minister not accept that Dublin Corporation will not be building any houses this year and that there is no sign the housing list will be any smaller next year than it is this year? Would he agree that it would make economic sense from the Government's point of view that these houses be taken into stock by the local authorities? Would he not also agree that the vast majority of the 700 dwellings in the Dublin area are not in a habitable condition to be relet?

There is an element of repetition now.

I do not know how many of the housing stock in the hands of the local authority are unfit for human habitation. The facility mentioned by the Deputy to purchase new or secondhand houses in addition to their rented stock has been available to the housing authority since 1984 but certain conditions had to be satisfied. This facility is there to be utilised. I have no hang up about allowing local authorities to do that if there is a need for it, but it does not seem to be the thing to do if the authority already have houses in their possession which could be refurbished and relet. In one breath we are talking about the homeless and in another we talk about hundreds of houses available for reletting but nobody living in them.

In relation to houses which are repossessed by Dublin Corporation or any other local authority, and following Deputy De Rossa's supplementary question, would the Minister not agree there is something contradictory when an existing tenant exercising his option to buy a house would have to pay £18,000 to £20,000 for that house but if it is repossessed and put on the open market, it can fetch something of the order of £13,000 or £14,000. This clearly is an inefficient use of public capital moneys. In the specific instances to which Deputy De Rossa referred it makes good housekeeping sense that the local authority should obtain from the Department permission to acquire that house through the capital budget and not put it on the open market at a giveaway price.

There is a point in that and I might consider it further. The Deputy might raise it after I announce the details of my new tenant purchase scheme in the next couple of weeks. I recognise there is a problem to be tackled here as far as the market price of existing housing stock is concerned, getting value for money and trying to keep the social mix right by making houses available. I am going to try and do something special in that regard. If the scheme is working well we might take this up again and I would not be unfavourably disposed to doing something. I would like to get the matter settled once and for all as far as the housing stock is concerned and to make the best use of our existing housing stock.