Mr. John McCarthy:

I will steer clear of politics. There is a reality. It would not be evenly spread across the country but in large measure, pretty much most local authorities found themselves in a situation where they had a build-up of void properties. According as the downturn hit, it was not only central government's financial position that was seriously compromised. The reality was that the local government system's financial capacity was also significantly compromised. Most local authorities saw a build up of units that were vacant in those circumstances for long periods of time that required significant investment and they just did not have it. As I was saying earlier, the situation that we had to get to grips with four years ago was we had a serious housing problem which we still have, we were faced with a situation of limited capital resources - significantly less than we have now available - and at the same time we were seeing this build up of empty units, and we had to take a slice of the available capital resource and for much less money than what it would cost to build new units, put that in to getting the vacant units back into use quickly. It was, with lesser cost, to get them delivered more quickly. Obviously, according as the capital profile has increased so much over the last number of years, we are moving much more further back into direct build activity, both by local authorities and AHBs.