Mr. Bertie Ahern:

I'm not too sure the experts from Maynooth are right. I mean, I wouldn't sign my name to their ... to the report. I don't accept that local authorities, just to get levies, property levies, started zoning houses all over the country. I wouldn't accuse local authorities of doing that, or members of local authorities of doing that. But, yes, I suppose the end result is that, for the next number of years, we have enough of ... the zoning of the land wasn't the problem, but, even in the height because there ... I think many of the reports had shown that there was sufficient zoned land around. What there wasn't was sufficient serviced land. As you recall, Senator, the amount of effort we had to put in in the early years, '97 to 2001, in getting the necessary infrastructure, not just transport infrastructure, but the North Fringe, which was responsible for zoning about 370 hectares of land in north County Dublin just to try to ... and in several other places as well. and there was a lot of capital expenditure in those years put in to service land that was actually zoned so that housing could be built. That's not a loss; as housing resumes again, a lot of that infrastructure and the road network and all that is all in place now to allow that organised and sustainable development over the next decade.