Mr. Brendan McDonagh:

NAMA is a diverse portfolio. There are over 12,000 loans and 55,000 individual saleable property units in the portfolio. That is what we inherited. Over time, we are looking over the 55,000 units and trying to identify the ones that are better to sell now, if there is an opportunity to sell as part of the whole business plan process, and the ones that are better to manage as assets. Maybe there is an opportunity to put some capital in to build on a site that has planning permission and sell the complete product. This is a complex business. We are not just looking at one debtor and deciding to work with that debtor until the end; we have 800 debtors to look at every single day to try to figure out how to meet our cash flow targets every year.

I appear before the troika every quarter and every time the troika tells me that it wants me to repay the NAMA bonds as quickly as possible and sell the portfolio as quickly as possible. We must reply to the troika, as we do to members, that this must be done in an orderly and phased way to realise the maximum value of the portfolio so that the taxpayer is not faced with another hole. If we do not generate enough cash to get rid of the contingent liability of the State, the Government has guaranteed NAMA bonds and must make up the difference. Our job is to make sure the contingent liability is not realised. As the chairman said, and as I said, we rigorously look at cash flow, the value of the assets and the market segments at points in time. It is not static and things change from month to month. Overall, we are very confident that by 2020 we will have realised enough cash to pay off the senior debt on the portfolio.

Deputy Murphy is correct in that I expect there will be a rump of assets left at the end of NAMA's work in 2020. They may not be sold by that date but we think we will have generated enough rental income on the assets to make up for the rump of assets left. The rump of assets that may be left is potentially the €900 million worth of assets outside the main urban centres in Ireland. It is not a big problem.