The role of the Housing Finance Agency is to facilitate and support the delivery of Social Housing in Ireland and we have been doing this successfully for nearly 40 years. Established as a State-owned company in 1982, the HFA provides loan finance to local authorities, approved housing bodies and Higher Education Institutions for housing and related purposes. The HFA operates within a fast-moving environment. Lending to our customers is at record levels with continued growth in finance to AHBs and local authorities for the development of social housing, as well as the introduction of lending to universities for new student accommodation – an area that is likely to see growth over the next few years. This is enabled by the availability of low cost long-term fixed rate finance from the National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA) and supranational banks such as the European Investment Bank (EIB) and the Council of Europe Development Bank (CEB). Our customers continue to avail of our excellent 25- and 30-year fixed rate finance which offers low interest charges and certainty in repayments. Individual borrowers also benefit from these long-term products in the form of the successful Rebuilding Ireland Home Loan offered by local authorities and financed by the HFA, and for which additional funding was arranged in 2019. The HFA had an outstanding loan book of €4.7 billion at end-2019 which comprised almost 9,000 loans.”