Mr. Pat Doyle:

I thank the Deputy. The Irish Council of Social Housing has 50,000 units. Every year, we do a community awards scheme. We look at best practice and what our members are doing in best practice. That is available on our website. It is worth five minutes on that website, because some of the awards that have been won over the last couple of years have been for the very types of buildings that the Deputy is talking about. They have been bringing back old convents and old monasteries. The Peter McVerry Trust itself brought back an old Dominican priory in Athy, for example. There was a community hall chapel there, and we brought that right back.

Under the social end of things, you have to go tender. Within the tender scheme, you have to have a grade 2 conservation architect. The architect that we use, for example, was the architect who rebuilt St. Mel's Cathedral in Longford when it had been destroyed. I think that was the biggest capital project that had been ongoing during the recession at one stage. Millions of euro went into it. On the social end, we have to have those competencies within our team for the very reasons the Deputy outlined, such as that counties like his own only have one such officer. What they want to do in respect of the applications is to be sure that everything has been covered and that they are only reviewing it, rather than managing it.

Old convents, old churches and many of those buildings are now being brought back. Sophia Housing, which is one of our members, has been really good on that. We have being doing a lot of work on that. Tiglin did a bit of that in Wicklow. Clúid is doing a bit. There will be members on the phone tonight saying, "You never mentioned me", but if you go on our website, you will see them. That is what we need to do. Even this week alone, I spoke to two religious orders about the possibility to re-use their old building. That will require us to pay attention to the environment and to conservation.