Mr. Brendan McDonagh:

People did not have the money to buy. We were obliged to sell the portfolio in order to pay off the debt but there was not much demand in terms of buyers who had money to purchase land and wanted to invest. Ireland was in a troika programme at the time and there was little confidence.

The Deputy referred to cash balances changing from time to time. As of today, the cash balance is about €2.4 billion and we have another €2 billion in bond redemptions this year. We need money to fund the various developments in which we are involved. She referred to a specific scheme in Clontarf but I do not have the detail on that. It is not up to NAMA to write to tenants because we are a secured lender. Bank of Ireland, AIB or Ulster Bank would not write to tenants. It is the owners of properties who write to tenants. If a receiver was in place, he or she would be in the shoes of the owner and have to deal with tenants. I do not have the detail with me on whether schemes are part of NAMA. Once a buyer purchases a portfolio, he or she will deal with it.

We answered the parliamentary question to which the Deputy referred. Not all of the debt has been written off. I understand the answer stated that €1.6 billion of par debt has been written off. The reality is that where a debtor has borrowed money, sold all the assets and given up any other assets to the maximum extent possible, that is what will be realised. The problem is that the debtors who came into NAMA had borrowed €74 billion from the banks. When we bought the assets from the banks, they were only worth €26 billion. We ended up paying the banks €31 billion, which was €5.6 billion more than what they were worth at the time because that was what the Government wanted. It was State aid and we have had to work to claw back the overpayment of €5.6 billion and now generate a surplus.

We would love to be in a position to say today that we bought a €74 billion portfolio for €32 billion and have been able to sell it for €74 billion but that is not the reality. The reality is that the lending in the first place was bad and property values were overinflated. That is something we inherited, not something we created.