Mr. Seamus McCarthy:

In this area it might be useful to distinguish between an valuation which is based on a professional exercise carried out by a valuer and an exercise of analysis and business interpretation, which would be aimed at trying to identify a price. There is a distinction between a valuation, which is one particular price arrived at in particular circumstances and based on particular assumptions, and then speculative exercises that would be undertaken asking what would happen if one changed one of the assumptions, say, regarding plot ratio or commercial mix. That would be the normal exercise one would expect to see undertaken in an investment decision. It is a useful tool to have that kind of information. Deputy Harris asked earlier about the point we made in the report about detailed analysis not having been carried out. One would expect for a proposed investment of approximately €400 million to see quite detailed business and cashflow analysis being done. There is an element of apples and oranges here, in that sometimes what is quoted is a price based on a business-type analysis, and in other cases it is a valuation based on an exercise carried out by professional valuers. I hope that is not over-complicating it.