Mr. Frank Daly:

It would not be totally unusual for that to happen. We certainly looked at the fact that Brown Rudnick and Tughans were, at that stage, coming in on behalf of Cerberus. However, it should be remembered that we did not have a problem with Brown Rudnick or Tughans as such. Our problem always was with the Northern Ireland Advisory Committee member or what was reported to us in relation to that NIAC member. I suppose we were concerned enough. It was really more a case of "to be sure, to be sure" that when it came to our attention that Brown Rudnick and Tughans were involved with Cerberus, we went back to Cerberus before its bid was considered or accepted and asked for an undertaking in relation to fees, which I outlined in my statement. As it is in my statement, I will not read it again. However, Cerberus gave us an unequivocal statement in writing to the fact that no fees were paid to any party with any connection to NAMA. That was really the issue for us, namely, that fees to any party with any connection to NAMA. Cerberus provided a very broad confirmation in relation to any board member, executive member or current or former member of the advisory committee.

While that may seem to be a very broad statement, our real target was to know whether there was any fee that in any way might be payable to Mr. Cushnahan at that time. One cannot go out and ask a particular question about a particular individual without giving oneself a level of exposure to something that NAMA would not want to get into. For this reason, we asked Cerberus for a very broad statement covering anybody connected with NAMA and it gave us that.