Mr. Pat McArdle:

Yes, I was more than surprised, I was shocked, number one. Number two, I was thinking about, while the others are answering the question there, I was thinking about the ... Ulster Bank didn't go to NAMA but it had obviously had some process by which it marked its book to market too and so, we would have had ... suffered from the same factors. My view ... this leads me into my view of NAMA ... I'm on record on saying NAMA at the time ... when I was writing for The Irish Times, was the least worst option. A lot of people disagreed with that, vehemently actually at the time in 2009, I still have that view. In fact, I think it has turned out better than could have been expected. What I would say, though, is that the process by which NAMA was set up, it took almost two years from the Bacon report to the transfer of loans was unfortunate. That timeline was far too long. Now, I don't think there was anything anyone in Ireland could have done about it because it was dictated by DG Competition in Brussels but it allowed time for the value of those assets to be marked down for a whole variety of reasons, some of which we touched on here earlier, the national interest, and that was unfortunate. And the final thing I'd say now is that it's obvious now that NAMA underpaid the banks for the loans they took.