Mr. John Moran:

We probably would have incurred even greater losses than we have already incurred. The scale of this was unprecedented. If there had been a fire sale there would have been buyers for it, there is no doubt about that. The same people who had been buying over the previous three to four years would have been active participants but they simply would have paid less. I think, in hindsight, the benefit of holding the assets for as long as we possibly could was probably a wise thing. Also, I do not think - and the members of the committee would be better qualified than me to say this - that the State could have taken the hit, unless we dealt with in the way that we did. It is arguable that the State has not been able to take the hit. The scale of this is that €74 billion worth of loans were transferred into NAMA, or €74 billion worth of face value. That does not take into account the other hundreds of billions that the banks had on their balance sheets that were not put into NAMA. It is mind-blowing in its magnitude.