When the DDDA announced the full extent of its financial woes it said that as soon as it could find a tenant or purchaser for its offices on Sir John Rogerson's Quay, which were fitted out at a cost of €1m, it would move back to the old offices on the north quays, which obviously were of a lower standard. It was a symbolic move, reflecting the authority's mistakes and the fact that half the staff would have to be laid off. Well, board minutes suggest they're now considering spending a few quid doing the old offices up. A spruce up, if you will.

At a board meeting on 22 June, the issue of appointing a "design team for old office refurbishment" was due for discussion but deferred.

At the board meeting the following month "the executive board requested that the executive conducts a cost-benefit analysis in connection with the refurbishment of the authority's former offices at Custom House Quay... and the relocation of the authority to the former offices". Carpets, repainting and some material changes are required.

So a state body that's millions in debt and shamefully defaulted at one stage on loan repayments can find the money to refurbish offices?

Not only that, but this is an organisation that has had to appoint debt collectors to chase up money it is owed, an organisation that is only now engaging in the appointment of a chief risk officer despite the fact that it was told six years ago that "it was not adequately prepared for a downturn in the property market".

Its response was to subsequently increase its exposure by buying a number of extra sites at the top of the market, particularly a stake in the Irish Glass Bottle site which had been valued by the DDDA at €220m but for which the authority and fellow investors Bernard McNamara and Derek Quinlan agreed to pay €412m.

At the same meeting in June, the authority discussed the business plan for that site that had to be drawn up for Nama, the bad loan agency that is known to think that a scheme of semi-detached houses might offer it the best possibility of a return after the haircut it gave the banks on the loan.

The key to the development of the site is the long-delayed Poolbeg masterplan, the draft of which led Dublin Port to state that the densities proposed for the Glass Bottle site could create a "perception of bias" and that this would "appear to provide a rich vein for litigation against the authority".

Last month, the executive was due to find out "the timeframe and the methodology for appropriate redrafting, delivery and submission for approval" to the environment minister John Gormley.

We wait with bated breath.