Yes, there's no real way to sugarcoat the Sallies' decision. It's not a good look.

Not every social agency had to buy into the Government's state house sales programme.

But you would have hoped that the one the Government named, the one the Government highlighted, might have been a starter.

If you weren't really sure whether they would or not, maybe it might have been smart politics not to go and name them.

I hope the Finance Minister is right when he talks of the interest in the project. Because it's a good idea. To genuinely believe that a Government department can run something as complex as state housing, especially given the facts that history present us, is foolhardy.

The sort of social agencies the Government was thinking of to help here are on the ground, they're far more agile and active.

But like all good ideas, theory is only one part, and if the reality doesn't follow you've got trouble.

To be fair to the Sallies, or indeed any social agency, getting into housing is an expensive business, and it requires you to potentially move out of other areas of social service as you put more and more eggs into one basket. But politically, here's where these agencies might run into trouble. They have traditionally been critical of state housing services and in some areas rightly so. Maintenance, quality of homes, size and fit of all homes, all have been lacking.

But once the Government offers you a chance to get into the game, an opportunity to put your money where your mouth is, your ability to bag the state becomes diminished.

It's not a good look to continue to carp, if you have the solution but you've chosen not to partake. But if there is an image issue it's more the Government's. This sort of policy always had a decent queue of people looking to bag it. There remain in this country a sizeable number who believe rightly or wrongly that when it comes to certain social issues, the Government and only the Government can and should run things.

They're deluded of course, but they never-the-less exist, and as long as they exist and make noise the Government are vulnerable.

So if the Sallies aren't in, then the Government better hope there are plenty of others that are, because the success initially of this policy is very easy to judge -  how many houses can they sell. The smaller that number, the more embarrassing it gets.