Mr. John O'Sullivan:

The decision affecting Dublin had very much to do with the size of the local authorities.

The situation is that when one does one, one has to be very conscious of the counties touching upon it so that one does not create disparity in economic terms between the two areas. Consideration was given to each county but we decided we needed to do counties with a rural and urban mix and Limerick and Waterford fitted that bill. We could have taken Cork and Waterford. That decision was made back in 2010. I am not particularly sure what the rationale was but a decision was made. Therefore, we then decided that we would concentrate very much on doing a swathe through the midlands. Our current iteration is closing off all of that loop.