Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

We will have a final round of questions and see how we go. I will ask about the value-for-money report, which dealt with a number of properties and the issue of whether to buy or lease. It was an interesting report which came out about eight weeks ago. I read it at the time. It made the point that leasing makes sense in the short and medium term. We cannot go out and buy hundreds of buildings tomorrow morning because the pounds, shillings and pence are not there. The upfront cost is an issue. However, where a Department or Government body needs a building for more than 20 years, the option of building or buying needs to be seriously considered. Will Mr. Buckley respond to that? The report found that the savings in some cases could be as much as 39%. The review found that a saving of €216 million for the State could potentially be achieved across just five buildings if they were built or bought as opposed to being leased. The OPW has obviously studied the report. Does it have plans to try to incrementally increase the number of buildings which are bought or owned as opposed to long-term leasing?