Mr. John McCarthy:

Equally, we are not blinkered and we are certainly alive to the risks and implications of that. We will certainly be working to ensure that whatever the outcome, our Rebuilding Ireland plan can proceed and achieve what it needs to. The Deputy mentioned the two sites in his own area and if I heard him right, he indicated that councillors have told the executive that Part 8 approval for those sites will not be forthcoming. We have no vested interest in continuing to push local authorities with projects; if they are not going to get Part 8 approval, we must respect the democratic process locally. One of the points I made to Deputy Coppinger was that we would rely very significantly on local authorities to make the judgments locally as to whether a project in a particular area will fly. We must ensure whatever project comes forward makes sense from a value-for-money perspective. With regard to individual locations within a local authority area, if the council in south Dublin came forward with alternative sites that it wanted to put into the mix in place of those, we would certainly look at it.