Mr. Colm Smyth:

I agree that enforcement is the key and that it has to be balanced between being proactive and reactive. Creating risk profiles of properties that are more likely to be non-compliant, which is what we did under the intensified inspection programme, is labour and resource-intensive, but it does actually get results in the long term. It can be a long-term undertaking. For our part, within Dublin City Council we have set up a private rented unit to give a corporate response on properties that are inspected. This means that there is improved joined-up thinking and inspections between planning enforcement, housing standards enforcement and fire safety standards enforcement. They are better co-ordinated, certainly within Dublin City Council, and I presume that is the case within local authorities across the board.