Brendan Ryan (Labour)

The Minister of State spent years doing that and he knows he has impressed me. We have had many an interesting and lively discussion in other fora. I do not agree with the Minister of State about many issues but I have a very high opinion of him. That is entirely possible and I enjoy such relations with many people.

I am disappointed at the tone of the Minister of State's response, and it is not necessarily his fault. I have not read everything the Minister of State has said about this programme which is designed to make sure the most efficient use of any buildings and land assets in the State's possession. That is a tautology, it goes without saying we should do that.

I hope at some stage he will do the equivalent of what Gordon Brown did in Britain, that is, produce a full portfolio of what the State owns. I am not sure that anybody knows what precisely the State owns, although it is probably all recorded somewhere. It would be a good start, if we are to sell assets, to find out what we have before we start selling. Keeping such a portfolio up to date would pose no difficulty, particularly with the help of modern information technology, once it was formalised and put together first.

Of course assets should be re-used and looked at. Contrary to what people think, I do not have a huge ideological issue about the efficient use of State assets. They should be used in the way that works most efficiently for the benefit of the community, sometimes by the State retaining them and sometimes by the State selling them because there are different ways of getting the value out of them. However, it would be close to being entirely foolish to sell off land which potentially could be used for building houses. That would be my opinion. It is very difficult to see how the State could be better off in terms of anything to do with the provision of housing by selling off land which could be used for that purpose.

I do not want to go too far down that road because the real issue here is the Central Mental Hospital in Dundrum. The suggestion of a way of funding it is a good idea and it is a bit disappointing to hear, from the Minister of State's speech, that the review started in December 2000. This is not a greenfield issue. The world is awash with reports, both official and unofficial, about the conditions in the Central Mental Hospital in Dundrum. In my own involvement with the Simon Community in Cork, which is where most of my time with the organisation was spent, one of the issues with which I was familiar from people in the Dublin Simon Community was the condition of the Central Mental Hospital in Dundrum. That was a long time ago – 20 years.

A group set up in December 2000 concluded its work last year, the Minister has accepted its report in principle and the project team has met. However, I do not see anywhere in the Minister of State's speech a statement about funding this project. I see proposals to work out what would be needed, to look at alternatives, to put together a brief and to look at various finance options, but so far there is no assurance that anything will be done.