Mr. Fergal O'Brien:

It is broader than the energy side. The essence of the proposal is that there is an incentive for the home owner to carry out these works within the window of opportunity and get some sort of subvention from the State. It pays for itself by creating new activity and bringing activity from the informal economy into the formal one. As I said, the merit of looking at something like that now is that we can see how these schemes have worked in the recession internationally. The cost benefits are there and do stack up. This would really stack up, particularly at the moment in the Irish economy given the increase we have seen in activity in the informal economy.

I do not think there are any implications for property tax. We think it would be a significant, positive net contribution back to the Exchequer and would create in the region of 6,000 to 10,000 jobs over a three-year period.

On property tax, our submission has focused particularly on where we would be players rather than just commentators. We have particular concerns on how employers would be affected. To answer the Chairman's specific query as to whether we have opted for a site valuation or the market value approach, we favour the latter purely for its simplicity, deliverability and administrative reasons. In an ideal world, the economist in me would go for a site valuation approach, but we do not think that is practical in the short term. It is something to which we would not be opposed in the long term. For pure ease of administration in the short term, however, we favour a market-based valuation approach.