However, the Office of Public Works (OPW), which is responsible for government property insists no final decision has been made about the future of the city centre office block once Mary Harney's department vacates the premises to take up residence at a location on Parnell Street.

While political sources interpret the Tanaiste's planned exit from Hawkins House in favour of temporary rented accommodation as evidence of the government's desire to acquire additional capital to help fund the expensive decentralisation programme, the OPW claims the 45 year old building's fate remains to be decided.

"Selling the property is obviously one option, " a spokesman says. "Demolition, or refurbishment are options too. In fact, it's still too early to say what will happen to Hawkins House. Things should become clearer once the move to Parnell Street gets underway."

Civil servants working there have been told they'll be moving soon to Chapel House, a state-ofthe-art office block over the Penneys store on Parnell Street.

Agreement is believed to have been reached for the Department to take a five year lease on the five-storey block with its 110,000 sq ft of floor space for a reduced rent believed in the region of 25 per sq ft.

Developer Liam Carroll who owns the building was able to use his dominant position in the office market to secure the leasing by offering a cut price rent.

"From what I know of it, Hawkins House is in fairly bad nick, " says Conor Hogan, incoming president of the Society of Chartered Surveyors. "Without calculating the figures I can't be definitive, but I suspect the economic option would be to demolish the building and construct a new office block.

"In some ways it's easier to refurbish a more modern block than an older building - if that makes sense. The design of the floor plates, the lift shafts and the toilet block areas may not be up to modern standards. The whole lay out may not suit the modern, open-plan style and might be more suited to the old-fashioned, cellular approach."

He points out that the particularly narrow space between floors in a structure of its kind and from that era could pose problems when it came to cabling the building to adequately meet the IT demands of the modern office.

"With raised access flooring you need about 250 millimetres of space for cable, so you can position a desk anywhere and still be guaranteed handy access to sockets and internet connections and the like. I know wireless technology is now in place, but it's not yet what you'd call an exact science.

Air conditioning would be an issue too, although these days there's a move to natural ventilation to reduce running costs, " he adds.

"Even for its day it was a very basic building, " says John Graby, director of the Royal Institute of Architects in Ireland. "What you would call an investment diagram, built without much thought for the people who would work there.

It would be very hard to talk about costs in relation to renovating and recladding it. Demolition might be a more obvious course of action. After all, you see people buying houses now, simply to demolish them and rebuild.

Against that, you have to consider the imponderables of the planning system, appeals, and your period of time without income, " he says.

"If you look at contemporary buildings, what they try to do, is engage with the street on which they're built.

"More and more now, you see shops and commercial activity at street level. But this particular building has no relationship with the line of the street and it doesn't have much relationship with the context of the streetscape. It's more like a fortress. Hawkins House has never been an addition to the Dublin skyline, that's for sure."

"It's a knock-down job, I think, " says Marie Hunt, head of research with CB Richard Ellis.

"If it went on the market in the morning it would almost definitely be a developer who bought it with the intention of demolishing it and building a new office block."