Ms Laura Behan:

On Baggot Street hospital, it would be unusual for the HSE to offer any property to the Department. The Department does not buy housing or buildings in general. All that work is done through our delivery partners, primarily through local authorities. I understand the HSE was in discussions with Dublin City Council about potential use of Baggot Street hospital. As far as I have been able to ascertain through lots of contacts throughout the Department, it was not offered to the Department. There may be a misunderstanding about that. There would not be any circumstances, really, in which a building would be offered to the Department of housing. I understand it was offered - and there were ongoing conversations on two separate occasions - to Dublin City Council and the Dublin Region Homeless Executive. In both cases, feasibility studies were done and I understand the costs of converting the property into something suitable was prohibitive.

The property has not been offered for sale to the LDA yet. It is a requirement under the LDA Act that any relevant public land, and it would be considered relevant public land, before being disposed of by the State owner, would be offered to the LDA. That has not happened yet. The HSE has not disposed of it so it would not be unusual for a State body to test the market, put a property on the market, try to identify what it could get for it and then go to the LDA, outline what the building could be deployed for and ask if the agency is interested. No one is being negligent by not offering it to the LDA yet.

The LDA is strongly interested in converting properties to social and affordable housing. It has looked at adaptive reuse of buildings similar to Baggot Street hospital. It looked at the Central Mental Hospital in Dundrum and at St. Bricin's Military Hospital in Montpelier Gardens. It proved cost prohibitive to deliver social and affordable housing in those properties. I am not sure the LDA would take it, even if it was offered, because it is very challenging.