Mr. Brendan McDonagh:

In terms of the profile of NAMA debtors that we acquired, the top 180 debtors held the lion's share of debt and accounted for €61 billion of the €74 billion of debt. We dealt with those bigger debtors in-house and then we probably had almost 600 smaller debtors that generally had debts of €75 million or less. We allowed those to be managed by the banks from which we acquired the loans. We did that at the outset because we had to build up the organisation and get the necessary skills in-house. Within the last two and a half years, we have been dealing as much with the smaller debtors as with the bigger debtors. We have redeployed teams in-house to deal with them and have taken the view that sometimes these people got into property speculation and it was not their main daily business.

A lot of people have told us that they do not really have any expertise in property development and have agreed to us appointing a receiver to the assets. We have seen many cases where a consortium got together and paid €5 million to €10 million for a small strip of land outside a small town which is now only worth €500,000 or less. We have taken a pragmatic view in such cases. If the debtor is co-operating with us, has no expertise and consents to a receiver then that makes it easier for everyone and if the debtor then makes a reasonable proposal to us in terms of trying to cover some part of the debt shortfall, we accept that. We try to be pragmatic and we also take the legal costs involved into account. We have been working quite well with people when they engage with us in a positive way. Our bottom line is that a debtor must give us full disclosure. If the debtor gives full disclosure and makes a reasonable proposal then we will do a deal because we recognise that everyone has to move on.

In terms of construction companies, the reality is that the levels of unemployment in the construction industry are very high and we are very conscious of that fact. A lot of construction companies got involved in speculative development which brought down their normal construction business. There have been a number of high profile casualties but there are also a large number of small and medium-sized construction companies who are NAMA debtors and whom we are supporting. We are giving them funding to build out developments - ten houses here, five houses there and so forth. It is below-the-radar stuff and not the big office blocks in Dublin and so forth. If something will work commercially, we will provide funding.

Ironically, the complaint now from the Construction Industry Federation, CIF, is that non-NAMA debtors wish they were in NAMA because of the availability of funding to build out commercially viable developments. Many such debtors also have commercially sound proposals but because they are not in NAMA they cannot get any money to build them out, even though it would make sense to do so. In terms of the debtors we deal with, if the proposal makes commercial sense, we will provide the necessary funding. That said, we must always be mindful of the fact that we must justify everything we do and all developments must make commercial sense. NAMA will not be around for ever but while we are around we will certainly provide funding if it will improve the value of any asset. That generates economic activity, not just in Dublin, but elsewhere. We have provided funding for developments in numerous locations once it made commercial sense to do so. In terms of the current NAMA portfolio, approximately €17 billion is remaining but less than €1 billion of that would be outside Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Galway. The majority of our portfolio is in Dublin. However, if it makes commercial sense to develop assets in regional Ireland, we are very happy to fund it.