Ms Marie Hunt:

The first thing I would say is that right throughout the downturn, if one looks at occupier activity office take-up in Dublin, one would not know there had been a recession in Ireland because it has held up consistently well right throughout. We have continued to see FDI flowing in largely because of our corporate tax rate but I suppose what is unusual about Ireland is that for five years we built nothing so we now have this scenario where we have a huge surge of FDI flowing in and effectively very little office stock for them to locate in. There is office availability but it is dotted in different places and most of these occupiers tend to want to be in Dublin 2 or Dublin 4 and the big issue is the scarcity of grade A stock, i.e., brand new stock that could be physically moved into in the morning. The vacancy rate at the moment is about 2%. Rents troughed out at about €27.50 per square foot. They are at €47.50 or €50 per square foot today.