Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

NAMA was set up under statute by the previous Government and the express purpose of putting it in place was to clean the banks' balance sheets by taking over the impaired loans that you referred to and they, you know, have a particular funding model. And they started pretty quickly then to dispose of loans and to get a return for the Irish taxpayer. I think they sequenced it because the Irish property market was dead in the water. They began to sell some of the London book first and they sold that successfully and then they progressed to Ireland. So, in terms of the valuations which were put on the loans when NAMA acquired them, they have been quite successful and they have paid back a lot of the debt now. The IBRC provision - when we liquidated to transfer anything that they couldn't dispose of to NAMA - will not have to be exercised because IBRC have realised sufficient funding to pay off all the secured creditors that they have. So, I don't think ... I mean, there was a time when the rating agencies were marking down Ireland to almost junk status because there was a story around, particularly in London, that there was a big black hole going to emerge in NAMA and there was another big black hole going to emerge in IBRC and this was believed. But as soon as we got sufficient evidence to show that there was no black hole, but that NAMA within its legal mandate would show a profit and IBRC within its legal mandate would show a profit, this was a big relief on the markets and it was a big relief to NTMA in funding Irish debt. So, this morning now, the NTMA got €1 billion of 15-year money for 1.85% and with the volatility in the markets at the present, that's a very low price for 15-year money.