Mr. John McCarthy:

We have a number of mechanisms through which we would monitor local authority performance. There is a bilateral relationship between the Department and individual local authorities where generally at the start of the year we sit down, discuss and agree what the authority expects to deliver over the course of the year. We would review that mid-year and again at the end of the year.

The local government system itself reports in-service indicators across a range of activities and one of the areas it covers is housing. In the annual service indicators report for 2012, one will find a number of service indicators but particularly in regard to vacant properties which show, for each local authority, the average length of time it takes from vacation of a dwelling to making it ready for rent again and data for each local authority in regard to the numbers of units vacant in their area.