Mr. Michael Walsh:

It is a complex question to answer. I will refer to the situation in my area. In general terms and keeping it very simple, the housing function plus central management as the overhead of the organisation and the maintenance function is generally managed in the overall budget. There are other areas such as community services where there is a significant imposition of costs, with much of it focused on local authority estates and otherwise where there is expenditure.

We are looking at resources overall. The answer to the Deputy's question will, in some respects, come from the inspection system. We must have a standardised inspection system. I take the point about local authorities conducting inspections, but regardless of who does it, the inspection system must be standardised and uniform in the private rental and the public rental sector. As an indictor, that cost comes in at around €150 per inspection contracted out. It is not an insignificant amount when applied to 130,000 or 135,000 houses. It needs to be done nonetheless because ultimately it is all about information and data. If that inspection regime were in place now, one could start assigning costs to remediation of the issues that have been identified. Resources are not that bad in the space but we would need to be able to prove that, and one of the problems is that post Celtic tiger and post recession, we have been forced through a diminution of resources into reactive maintenance and so on. The optimum scenario is to have a planned maintenance regime that people clearly understand that is targeted to achieve the minimum rental standards.