Mr. Brendan McDonagh:

When we acquired the loan portfolio, Senator, only 20% of the income that was coming off investment assets - office blocks, shopping centres, whatever else was being mandated to the banks. I found this personally extraordinary that 80% of income could be just diverted away and nobody seemed to be following up on it.

A lot of debtors just stopped paying when the crisis happened in the case on the day, so whatever they were using that income for, they might be trying to save their businesses, put it in their business to keep going to get through this temporary crisis as was the case on the day, or some of them might be ... might try to maintain a lifestyle that they had before the crash. So one of the first things we decided and really on day one, once we saw this, we will say, we want that income coming to NAMA so we want that income diverted to us and we have financial monitors on trading businesses to make sure that there is not unnecessary overheads being taken out. So, one of the key successes of NAMA is when I talked to credit rate agencies as was the case on the day, is NAMA's collected €25 billion to date in five years. We have got €20 billion collected from asset sales. We have got €5 billion collected from income on the assets. That €5 billion has been crucial. If we did not collect that income and left it with the debtor, the debtor would have probably kept it and spent it or whatever in the case on the day. We have collected that. That is a huge sum in terms of the amount of cash flow for any businesses and our view is that that has to go to servicing your debt or amortising down your debt or whatever the case is and you know, we controlled ... we kept income in and we controlled the amount that we give back out to allow businesses and people to run their businesses which is appropriate.