Mr. Martin Bourke:

We were the main authors of the report with the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. It probably came as no surprise, as the Chair has said, that once a period of 20 years has passed, there is profit in an owned building whereas in a leased building, if you were to cut and run after 20 years, there is no asset left and the holder is just walking away from a lease. What we always try to do in the estate and the overall portfolio is have an appropriate balance between owned and leased buildings. Commentators sometimes say that everything should be owned but we would not hold with that and nor would most jurisdictions would. A balance is needed so that you can scale up or down depending on what is happening at the time. For instance, at the time of the rationalisation in 2008 and 2009, we rationalised out of many leased properties.