Mr. Eamonn O'Sullivan:

There is much to respond to and I will do my best in the time available. Deputy O'Dowd referred to debt in regard to land acquisition. It is something that affects some local authorities, where it is more pronounced, than others. The local government audit service is working on it because it is a significant problem in certain counties, of which Deputy O'Dowd's is one. It is under active consideration.

On best practice and how we share and learn from it, I will use my own county of Monaghan as an example. Each year when the National Oversight and Audit Commission performance indicators are published, we take those indicators locally and rank ourselves not only against the national indicators but also against local authorities of a similar size and character - looking at the most local level, there is fierce competition between Cavan and Monaghan, for instance - and we do so with a view to establish where we can do better. After doing this exercise at management level, we bring that report through our corporate policy group and to our councillors. There is a process of trying to use the information that Mr. McLoughlin and the National Oversight and Audit Commission assemble and collate to improve our services but it is done in the context of funding constraints and staffing limitations. It is not always possible to achieve them but we use the indicators to set targets to improve our position across the indicators over the following year. One area where we have proven very effective has been pre-letting maintenance of local authority housing stock where Monaghan's turnaround time is the lowest nationally. In the example of show case to which Mr. McLoughlin referred, my housing staff would be giving a presentation to their colleagues on how they achieved it in Monaghan. It is an example of where indicators can be used as a benchmark which facilitates improvements within the sector. If, through the local government added service, we can comply or explain, it would be an efficient way of improving standards across the sector. It relates to scaleability, or the scale of a small rural county such as Monaghan versus that of the larger local authorities such as Fingal or Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown. There will be differences because of scale and the character of the areas. We are trying to use the performance indicators not only to report on performance but to improve it as a sector. That will take time.