Ms Caroline Timmons:

To compare apples with apples, we are talking about a number of years as regards Limerick's target. Limerick has a target of 60 for this year. It has a bigger vacancy rate than Dublin city but many of Dublin City Council's 150 activation target properties might go into the CPO programme next year. A CPO takes a long time to do. If a vacant property can be moved on in another way, that is generally a better avenue. A target of 150 for Dublin city is very high overall. It takes the same level of resources to be put into it but the CPO is a fairly costly and timely exercise. We would like to get Dublin City Council started this year with a view to giving it a higher target next year, if properties that should be CPO'd are identified. If we simply give the council a target without knowing what properties there are to be CPO'd, I am not sure that would be as useful or valuable to the work it does. We would like to get the council started and get it going.

It is learning a lot from how other local authorities have done it. There was a lot of confusion and a little mystique around how a CPO is done, in some ways. That has now been demystified by the work that has been done. There is much more confidence in local authorities about how to get that-----