Patrick O'Donovan (Limerick County, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I do not disagree. Those sentiments are my sentiments. It has been very frustrating for us that all over the country the route for these properties has been either through local community groups or public auction. As I said, there is a lack of engagement by some local authorities. We will make available to the committee a spreadsheet of everything that has been done in the last two years, to include all of the local authorities, whether we got responses or engagement or not, and the costs we have deemed appropriate in terms of their sale. We were not proposing to gift these properties to the local authorities. Perhaps that is why some ran away from it. The previous contributor would be the first person to say I am giving away property now for nothing. These require market interventions to ensure we accrue the market value for the Exchequer. We are not a charity. When we put these properties up for sale, they go for a valuation and then they go to tender. Ideally, we should not be at that stage at all. We should be getting the valuation and consideration from the local authorities. If we do not do that, we are amenable to a licence, lease or anything else to keep these properties in public hands and to giving them to the local authorities for 25, 30 or 40 years. We made it that easy, and some local authorities grasped that option, while others did not. The last option, which is not what we want, is to put them up for sale. Unfortunately, we have had to do that in too many cases.