Mr. Ian Talbot:

I thank the Chairman. I will briefly stick out my proud chest on behalf of Mr. Malone to give my thanks for the work that Dundalk and all of our chambers of commerce around the country are doing to profile and promote their local areas.

On procurement, we should recognise some of the great value that is being put in place through the Office of Government Procurement and the work it has done to develop skills, but there is still a job to do. That group was set up at a time when the economy was going backwards and it did a great job to save money at the time. Now as we need to expand significantly, we need to look at how the expertise it has built up is rolled out and, as Mr. Parlon said earlier, consider the economic value rather than just the cheapest price. Second, on the point of whether housing will hinder job creation, there are many issues at play. We have covered some in our submission such as maximising the workforce available and making sure that people in houses in an area can go to work because child care facilities, for example, are provided. Do we also need to improve the use of the housing stock that we have so that people move through a life cycle of housing stock? In that case the right mix of apartments, family homes and retirement homes is also needed. There are many things we can do beyond asking whether we can just get bricks and mortar out there. In the short term, trying to maximise the number of people we can get working is an objective.