Mr. Ciar?n O'Connor:

Sixty years is just a line we set. If we were doing conventional Garda and other work, it would be a 70-year life. We just went to a point where we knew we could make it to, so it could last a lot longer than that, but that is what we went for.

I took a note of the points Deputy Ó Broin mentioned. He is right that we did not have to formally go through planning. With all of them, we met the local authorities, agreed the road layouts and service elements and, in a number of cases put in place provision for cycleways to come through the sites in the future. We did all of that because we were very conscious that in a year or two we are going to have to go back in to maintain and have planning permission to enter. We have done that on all the sites. We have met all the local authorities, so it will not be a surprise to anyone. All the connections were done in the same way.

As Deputy Ó Broin stated, the size of sites is very important. For it to be any way economic, there would need to be 100 or more units on a site. Because people did not want to have ghettos, they were anxious to keep the size of the units small in terms of the quantum. If we take it in just straight economic terms, there should be at least 100 units, going up to 300 units to be economic. In a way, we had to sort of plough through, but with the constraints of things outside of economics. They were fair enough. They were social issues that people want to do, and local people were happy with them. That was an issue. That is a lesson learned. If we were to do it at scale, there would really need to be more than 100, and preferably 300 or more. We would then a major benefit in the context of time, speed and quantum.