Kate O'Connell (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I suppose my point is if one has a local authority where there are proactive politicians who see something in front of them and they decide to take action, such as Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council did in 2004, changes can be made. I believe they turn around voids in approximately 12 weeks. It works. I believe the previous speaker was on the local authority in Meath at that time and spent ten years on it.

On what I intended speaking about before I got side-tracked by politics, the HAP scheme was raised earlier - I was at another meeting. There is sometimes a concern as to whether we are getting value for the HAP scheme. How does one control whether we are getting value? Maybe somebody could elaborate on that.

With big public sector construction projects, there is often concern about overruns, that the start price is not the finish price. Has the Department provisions in place to mitigate against overruns? Has Mr. McCarthy any examples of what sort of percentages of overruns the Department is looking at currently? What is happening at the minute? What are considered acceptable overruns due to unforeseen circumstances? Has Mr. McCarthy a list of what he would consider to be acceptable?

Finally, because we all want to get home, I imagine there are often issues around the public appointment process. It is a lengthy process and, I suppose, compared to the private sector, sometimes by the time people have gone through it they may not want the job anymore. One hears anecdotal evidence of that. Is there provision in place where the Department can bring people in on a short-term basis for a year and perhaps circumvent the lengthy process that may not yield people?

Could architects, quantity surveyors, site managers and so on be recruited on a short-term basis to help circumvent the lengthy process?