Mr. Ivan Grimes:

As the witnesses from Limerick City and County Council have said, it is about committing a resource to the project, which was what we did with the repair and leasing scheme. We came up with the idea originally so we were anxious to make it work. One of the things we realised was that €40,000 was the maximum loan available initially and that that would not really work with smaller standard houses that might be in need of repairs. If you converted larger properties into two, three or four units, you could bring in four times the level of funding. Based on our experience, the Department agreed to increase the maximum loan amount to €60,000. That has enabled us to be even more ambitious.