Professor Alan Ahearne:

I mean, when a debt transferred, that full amount of debt was owed to NAMA, and there was no sense in which NAMA was instructed to write off large portions of it, or just to chase the selling price value. No, there is still, the full amount was owed. Now, everybody knew that NAMA was not going to get back the full amount or anything near it. It was expected that what they would get back would be about the amount of money they had paid. After all, that is why they valued it that way. So, if they could get the full ... I mean I think €72 billion transferred for €30 billion, something like that. That was something like the numbers. If they could get the 100% back, the €72 billion, then we wouldn't have this inquiry because therefore there wasn't a bubble, all assets were valued properly. It was clear that there was a bubble, that assets were not valued, were not at the height of the bubble fairly valued, so there were going to be huge losses.

So that was, but, I mean, for example if there was a developer who had bought a field, and had a loan and the collateral on that was, I don't know, the field plus a bit of a pension fund, and that pension fund rose in value for some reason, and that pension fund would then be part of the collateral behind it, so that NAMA could go after that pension fund as well as the field if they ... so there was no sense of okay, "You've transferred this loan. It was originally €100 billion. It's transferred as €100 million and is now €5 million, therefore you only owe us €5 million." That was never the intention, and I don't, from what I know I don't think that has been the practice.