Mr. John Crawley:

The Deputy's question relates to the sale of a property at 16 Hanover Quay, which has recently been concluded. We are comfortable that we followed a process that allowed us to achieve a fair market value for the property. The sale of this particular development arose in the context of the sales programme of the authority to cover its significant liabilities. The code of practice for State bodies provides that in exceptional circumstances such bodies may follow a process outside of competitive tendering. We accept that competitive tendering is the best practice. We discussed this at the time with the National Procurement Office, which advised us that we needed to be clear in our objectives and the audit trail, and to ensure appropriate reporting in that regard, which we have done. We engaged professional valuers, as did the people who purchased the property. Between the two sets of valuers an open market price was arrived at. This open market price was derived in late 2013. There was a comparable property on the market at that time, in not dissimilar circumstances to this particular property and very close to it. It sold for €99 per sq. ft. We achieved €144 per sq. ft. for the property we sold. We were comfortable that we did achieve the open market price, based on professional independent valuation and benchmarking it against a comparable sale that took place in or around the same time. In terms of value for money, we are comfortable that we achieved that.