Mr. Declan Lavelle:

As long as a building continues to be capable of beneficial occupation we value it and we put it on the valuation list. In relation to properties that are vacant or where we are looking at a particular street with a high vacancy rate, what one will normally see on such a street is that the valuation levels are quite depressed because there is an imbalance of supply and demand. Generally speaking, what we see in revaluation projects is that the areas where there are high vacancy rates have lower valuations.

When one looks at the lifecycle of a building it goes from development stage and is maintained over a period and then perhaps for economic reasons it starts to fall into disrepair and it gets to a stage of disrepair where it is no longer capable of being occupied for that particular purpose and at that stage it becomes not rateable and it is struck off the valuation list.