Mr. Frank Daly:

We would need to go back to the beginnings of NAMA when there was significant sensitivity about the fact that the agency would be taking on or have control of a very significant portfolio of real estate in Northern Ireland. This was quite sensitive politically as is, I suppose, understandable in the context of North-South relations. At the time, the Minister for Finance, the late Deputy Brian Lenihan, came up with a neat solution that NAMA would be asked to form an advisory committee on Northern Ireland which would have a couple of representatives from Northern Ireland on it. As I understand it, the selection process was that the Minister or Department consulted the Northern Ireland Executive, in particular, Sammy Wilson, who was then the Minister for Finance and Personnel. The two names of Frank Cushnahan and Brian Rowntree were furnished to NAMA as a consequence of that consultation and the NAMA board then set up the committee and appointed these two individuals to it, together with several directors of the NAMA board because the Act requires that the majority of members of an advisory committee like the Northern Ireland committee or the planning committee be members of the board of NAMA. That was the origins of the committee and the two individuals were appointed for two years.

They were renewed in 2012 and Mr. Cushnahan resigned in November 2013. We dissolved the committee in September 2014 because there was no longer a need for it after Project Eagle and Mr. Rowntree's term ceased at that stage.