Professor Alan Ahearne:

NAMA did not prevent any burning of bondholders. It is not true to say that we had to either set up NAMA or carry out nationalisation and burn bondholders. Anglo Irish Bank was nationalised, but it sold a lot of property to NAMA. There was a bit of a debate at the time that these were alternatives. That was just flawed thinking, because they are not alternatives. I think the system we have now has done very well. The pricing was fair and it gave a big discount on the loans it bought. I do not think one can be too precise about these things. Sometimes we suffer from false precision. The discount was 57%. If somebody is going to argue that it should have been 59%, 55% or 60% I would wonder how he or she could be so precise.