Brian Hayes (Dublin South West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It all depends on when one takes a lease. One may have taken a lease on a property for ten or 20 years, and that still stands irrespective of the state of the economy. I have figures that show the actual average cost of what we have negotiated against the market price. Let me illustrate this point. The average cost per square metre that we have negotiated is €409. The market average cost is €675. Let us take the cost per square metre in Dublin, where we have negotiated leases at €289 per sq. m compared to the average of €344 per sq. m Of course, we should be able to negotiate a lower price, because we are the biggest player in the business. We are the people who should be looking for break clauses and should be getting out of leases, and we are. Deputy Fleming made some very positive comments on NAMA during a previous committee meeting, on which I followed up earnestly. We are aggressively in the market and are getting out of leases. The new public sector will no longer be taking out long-term leases because we have fewer numbers. As one would expect because of our clout, we are way ahead of the market in terms of what we negotiated because we have the power to do that in many towns, such as the Deputy's town of Portlaoise, where we are by far we are the biggest player. If we were not there, then there would be no Portlaoise, which would be terrible.

A very aggressive strategy has been deployed by our property people. We can do even better than that. The way in which we can do better is to be given the directive role, which as I said, will be covered in the proposal we will bring to Cabinet in a matter of weeks. That will give this office a much greater responsibility in putting pressure on Departments to move. I think I described it previously to the Deputy as a gigantic chess board which the Office of Public Works has to negotiate. It is not just about moving one group of staff from A to B. There are consequences in terms of the numbers involved, the fit-out that is required and whether one has the capital investment to do it. Those aspects of property management will be accelerated with the new power we will be given under the property memo. The success that we have experienced in recent years in negotiating lower rents is manifest. However, Deputy Fleming wants more and if I was on the other side of the House I would have the same questions. I will be able to report even further progress next year when we have been given the new powers in office to manage the property portfolio in a more efficient way than it is currently.