Mr. Brendan McDonagh:

The reality is that we bought €74 billion worth of loans from the banks and paid €32 billion to the banks for the loans. I would love to be able to say that the value of the underlying assets was €74 billion. The value was €32 billion when we bought them. What we are trying to realise is the €32 billion. We are pursuing each and every debtor for the maximum amount of money he or she can repay, either through selling the underlying assets, going after the debtor for unencumbered assets or reversing asset transfers.

In my statement earlier I said that, to date, we have taken €800 million from debtors which they had as unencumbered assets or had transferred to third parties. We forced them to give back those assets. We are doing asset searches on people and are asking them for sworn statements of affairs. We check that their statements of affairs are correct. I assure the Deputy that if debtors have more assets than they have declared to us, we will pursue them. While I do not want to refer to any specific case, NAMA is in the courts quite often pursuing people where we believe they may have assets other than those they have declared to us.