Mr. John O'Connor:

There is an exception provision as well whereby even if one's property only has a condition rating of one, one can get into the scheme if the adjoining property is badly affected and one's property might be affected as well. There is that exceptional clause in the legislation and in the scheme. If one is joining and one's property only has a one rating one may very well be taken into the scheme as an exception because of the impact of what is happening next door to one's own premises.

Deputy Ellis mentioned HomeBond. I will not comment on the comment that HomeBond got off lightly. All I will say is that the PRB has negotiated a certain level of contribution to the implementation of the scheme with HomeBond in terms of testing services which they are in a position to provide. The PRB has received a commitment from HomeBond to provide testing and other services to the value of €2 million over the next couple of years. The PRB is keeping an eye on how well these services are working. To date, as I said in my opening remarks, it is working out pretty well as we had anticipated. It is something that the board set out to do at the start, that we would try to secure whatever contribution we could from HomeBond in terms of easing the burden on the tax payer. The Deputy mentioned the issue of the pursuit of builders and developers the board is conscious of the need to do that and is doing it. Mr. Carroll has spent a lot of time on this particular aspect. It has taken quite a lot of time as it is a legally complex matter. The level of co-operation from builders and developers varies a lot. Some of them, quite honestly, are good and others are not so good. It is interesting to observe how different companies and different developers have reacted to this. Mr Carroll might say a bit more on this matter.