Mr. Kieran Kehoe:

I echo that. I was previously in Laois local authority which is a very small authority in comparison to Waterford, Limerick or those in Dublin. There are efforts being made in Laois and they have asked us for information about the repair and lease scheme. We need local authorities that are working quite well in certain areas. We know that we do not do everything perfectly. Mr. Daly knows this stuff better than us so we have consulted with him recently to learn from best practice. We want to do the same to help other local authorities.

I want to go back to a slightly separate issue raised by Senator Fitzpatrick. Dereliction can be addressed in many different ways. I appeared before the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Media, Tourism, Arts, Culture, Sport and Media last week. I gave some information on the Waterford Walls project and how the use of murals and street art can address dereliction by making a building look better.

Going back to the issue of ground floor use, in our repair and lease scheme more than 600 units will be delivered once we open the new scheme tomorrow under repair and lease. A lot of ground floor units have been funded under the URDF scheme I mentioned previously, right in the heart of the city centre, which still needs a lot of work in Waterford. We felt that keeping those ground floor units in commercial use was probably better for the city centre space. That is the challenge we face now. We have transferred some of them into community use and other cultural uses. We want to get the private sector involved as well.