Mr. Michael McCarthy:

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue. Once upon a time, I chaired the select committee on housing. I remember that every time the Minister came before the committee, particularly when we were dealing with legislation, I struggled to understand the whole issue of voids. The Deputy has significant experience of this on the ground in Cork city. There may be two or three houses boarded up in an estate but public representatives are dealing with representations from families on the housing list who want to get into a house. It is one of the issues to which NOAC pays a lot of attention in terms of our scrutiny visits. Some local authorities were better than others at keeping the period for which a property was void to a minimum. The national average now is approximately 14 or 15 weeks. That is a significant improvement in the past four or five years. There are extreme cases where it is far longer than that. There may be particular reasons behind that, so what we do-----