Professor Gregory Connor:

Looked at now, NAMA has been a success. Overall, it is a pretty clear success at this stage. I found as did others that the setting up of NAMA was delayed inordinately, which was a mistake. At the time, I felt there was a political aspect to that. It was delayed to provide an opportunity for borrowers in the property development community to rearrange their affairs in ways that were not optimal for the taxpayer. I think there was a delay in setting up NAMA.

The overpayment goes back to some of the questions about insolvency. Who knows how to value long-term assets? That was deliberate, as was stated in the accounts, and a 30% premium was paid which went through the EU's criteria and was allowed. The US did the same thing. If one looks at the targeted asset relief programme, another success, it also overpaid for the assets. The idea of overpaying to market value to allow the banking system to recover worked in the long run. I do not think I have a problem with that. They could have paid less, but they deliberately overpaid rather than force all the banks into insolvency and then restructure them. It was to allow three of the banks to continue in something that looked like non-bankruptcy. It looked like that. Effectively, two of them are State owned.