Lisa Chambers (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy raises a good question. The ESRI did a report about two years ago in which it indicated that the reason for the high vacancy rate at that time was that the economy was only coming out of recession and there was no incentive to invest. It noted also that there had been no commercial investment for about five years. However, when things began to turn around, we saw the sector beginning to pick up. The problem with commercial investment, that is, offices and so forth, is that there is a long lead-in time and it is not something that can be turned around overnight. While there is activity in the sector, it will be some time before everything begins to come on stream. I accept the Deputy's point in the sense that there is probably a bottleneck now, especially in the capital, but the position should be alleviated, probably in the short term as there has been activity in the sector for two or two and a half years.