Mr. Brendan Ryan:

We have to do something. Most of the building programmes we have on hand are being delivered by public private partnerships and they are very much welcome. We have the Criminal Courts of Justice, which has been a great project. We will have seven new courthouses, and Deputy Stanton will be aware that one of those will be in Cork. The contract for them will be signed in the next two weeks and they will be completed within two years. They will provide 31 extra appropriate courtrooms. The Hammond Lane site to provide for the family and child care courts in Dublin will be delivered by public private partnership. Smaller venues like Swords District Court and other venues throughout the country require public investment of €1 million, €2 million or €3 million. They are capital projects. They do not come into the public private partnership model.

At one stage back in 2008 we had a capital building programme of €29 million. For the past four years it has been about €4.5 million and most of that goes to support our ICT. We have to vire it across to support our IT which is totally underfunded. If we could ring-fence money for IT and allow the €4-€5 million or even an increased €6 million on the capital side, we could undertake projects such as the Swords District Court which are much needed, but in the short term I do not see any solution and that venue is not really fit for purpose.

As the Deputy will be aware, there was a proposal last year to move the business back into the city centre, which was vigorously opposed by various groups. We did not pursue that, but our difficulty is that our hands are tied. We have no money to improve the facilities. Our proposal to move it into appropriate facilities in the city centre is not acceptable, so I do not know what we are going to do in the short term.