Mr. Frank Daly:

My colleague, Mr. McDonagh, will deal with the social housing figures. I will respond to something Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett said at the beginning of his contribution.

It is not the net objective of NAMA to put developers back in business or to create a property market that is anything like the market that was in place here in the earlier years of this decade. The objective of NAMA is at a minimum to recoup the €32 billion that we paid for the loans in the interests of the taxpayer. That is our key objective. Earlier in my statement I noted that this would represent €32 billion off the backs of the taxpayers of this country. Deputy Boyd Barrett referred to a social divided and that would represent a huge dividend and one of the best possible outcomes that NAMA can deliver for the people.

There was a question about whether people will regain ownership if they repay their loans. I believe few of the debtors we have will get back into the ownership situation they were in previously. However, if people repay in total their loans to NAMA we cannot stop them from getting back into business. Other Deputies made the point earlier that we will still need a property sector and a development sector in the country in future.

In the middle of this discussion Deputy Boyd Barrett referred to the Enda Farrell case and the loan purchase by ICG-Longbow and he fused together these with remarks about the objectives of NAMA being to rebuild debtors and so on. The reality is that the individual who joined ICG-Longbow did so long after that transaction was done, some nine months afterwards in fact. NAMA is like any other organisation in that people will come and go and they have a right to go and earn a livelihood at some stage in future. The conflict of interest restrictions that apply while they are staff of NAMA do not die the day they walk out the door, they stay with them in perpetuity. There is a limit to what we can do in this regard.

However, I wish to put on record that we have no evidence in respect of any transaction or any move of any person who was in NAMA and who now might be working for someone else that such a person compromised his or her position or NAMA because of the use or the carrying of information he or she might have had while a member of NAMA. It is important to put this on the record for the staff of NAMA and for those who have left NAMA. Obviously, I am not talking about the particular case that has been referenced earlier.

A question was asked about social housing. We work with housing associations but it is not up to NAMA to set the social housing policy of the country. We have enough to do without doing that and that is for others to do. Within the structure and policy in place we will do our best to deliver and that is what we have been doing. The chief executive might clarify some of the numbers.