Joe Costello (Dublin Central, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I have one or two more questions for the chairman of NAMA. It would seem to an outsider that Project Eagle was not handled that well, that there was a lack of judgment in terms of pursuing it, in retrospect. Nine international consortia were involved at the very beginning and we have only talked about the three final ones, Fortress, PIMCO and Cerberus. When the other six were gone and when PIMCO pulled out or NAMA let it be known to PIMCO that is should pull out, we were down to two. Considering that Fortress has made an underbid to the reserve, and had made that clear at a relatively early stage, as I understand, was it prudent to press ahead with the sale even though it reached the reserve by just £1.241 million? In those circumstances, there could be a question mark as to whether this was a prudent move, considering all the circumstances and the reason NAMA had to get a commitment by Cerberus that it had not paid any fees and so on and that it had indicated that might compromise the situation. NAMA was relying on a great deal in those circumstances in making a judgment call.