Ms Geraldine Kennedy:

No, it is not and very strict rules apply in it. The Senator could be confusing the advertisements with the editorial material. There has to be an editorial balance of about 40% and 60% between editorial and advertisements. Often, the poor old property editor would be pulling out his or her hair - there were two of them in my time - on a Tuesday when more and more ads would come in during the years of the boom because the supplement would have to be increased by two pages and these would have to be filled. A lot of critical stories were published in the property supplement as well. I think it was Dr. Mercille who asked a question yesterday about when The Irish Timeshad ever covered affordable housing. I have ten editorials covering affordable housing and I can leave them with the inquiry if members wish. The people who wrote about affordable housing, half of whom wrote about it in the property supplement, included Dr. Garret FitzGerald, Fintan O'Toole and Des Geraghty, who was head of an affordable housing association at the time.

These issues were tackled in the property sector as well, so much so that a lot of complaints were made to the property sector.