Professor Patrick Honohan:

I think NAMA was a good solution for the State. I'm not sure it was a good solution for the borrowers. It was a terrible solution for the banks, if you think ... if by the banks, you mean the bank management and bank shareholders. They were basically wiped out. The bank shareholders were wiped out and you know, a lot of the senior managers. So, I think it was good for the ... it put behind us that part of the distressed loans of the banks. It didn't attempt to take all of the distressed portfolio from the banks. I think it would've been very hard to do that because distress was so prevalent in the banks. You would've been taking all of the banks' business away and they wouldn't have been dealing ... the customers wouldn't ... the whole society would be lacking banking business. So, it could've been more ambitious, but ... and there were, I think ... I think Peter Bacon talked about a more ambitious NAMA, which would be a larger NAMA, but I think it was probably prudent to stay with the large property developer and borrowers.