Mr. John O'Sullivan:

At the beginning of the programme, the initial decision was to deal with the larger Dublin local authorities. Waterford and Limerick were next because we wanted to perfect our technique of dealing with counties that had a mix of urban and rural. There was concern that we would ensure that we would not have disparities between contiguous counties. As Deputy Catherine Murphy states, it is very much about having whole sweeps of counties done around the same valuation date. We also have to have an eye to the future, to the second and subsequent revaluations because we want to group larger counties together so that they can be done. One cannot do it perfectly because there are towns sitting on the edges of county boundaries but we try to take that into account.

We have colour coded the map. Everything shaded in purple has been done, blue is under way and green is the final stage of the programme. The western seaboard counties have certain elements in common, for example they would have a tourism and leisure sector but some of the businesses in those areas would be seasonal. We would think that may be reflected in the revaluation as well.