Dr. Dan McLaughlin:

Well, first of all, commercial property prices fell in Ireland 67% and land banks probably fell possibly even 90% I don't know. Also, commercial property prices fell in the other jurisdictions that the banks had assets in - the United States had a huge fall, the UK had a huge fall. That fall in asset prices was ... what happened was NAMA meant that that was marked to market. Obviously house prices dropped 50% and it's obviously a very serious thing for a lot of people that were in negative equity and some people obviously lost their homes. But the banks did not mark to market that house price fall, and as we now know the banks have now if you like ... the level of arrears tells you that the banks did not foreclose on those houses and therefore mark to market the price change. So commercial property was mark to market and that ... NAMA crystallised €42 billion of losses for the Irish banking sector.

Now obviously a lot of banks had put provisions against some of that but ... Senator D'Arcy asked me earlier about the NAMA discounts and I just made the point that, you know, the ... the Bank of Ireland one was lowest. But I was shocked, I think everyone was shocked that, how could banks, how could some banks have a 60 odd per cent discount on some of their assets. I think just factually it is the commercial property price falls, asset price falls that opened up the huge capital losses in most of the banks. And the problem or the issue with asset prices is that, in general, not always but in general, asset prices tend to rise over time. So obviously if you buy an asset five years later, I'm talking about real asset like land, five years later it's generally higher in price and that's what we see now.