Mr. Frank Daly:

I thank the committee for the invitation to be here this morning. We are pleased to inform the committee about NAMA's activity in the housing market - activity that has been, and will continue to be, positive. Mr. Brendan McDonagh will take the committee through our presentation in detail while I will set out in summary what NAMA has done to date.

The reality is that ever since we began our operations, NAMA's focus has been on getting people into homes, not out of them. Our track record proves this. We inherited approximately 14,000 empty homes and, working with debtors and receivers, we found tenants or buyers to live in the overwhelming majority of them. This was a significant injection of thousands of units of supply into the housing market as we matched up empty homes with people who needed a place to live. In total, we have facilitated more than 11,000 individual buyers - families, couples and individuals - who have bought homes from our debtors or receivers.

In fact, contrary to the perceived wisdom that NAMA has sold most of its residential portfolio to so-called vulture funds, 88% of all the homes that have been acquired from the NAMA portfolio over the past five years have been bought by individual buyers in individual transactions. There are some who mistakenly claim that only big investment groups have been able to buy NAMA houses and apartments. These claims are not true and are contrary to the factual position. Where we have sold houses and apartments in larger groups, it is because there were already people living in them and the alternative of selling the properties individually would have meant removing those people.

In addition, it is easy to forget that in 2012, at a time when many people were afraid to buy homes because prices were falling, NAMA introduced a groundbreaking scheme to protect people buying a home from further price falls – we deferred 20% for five years. This scheme, called the deferred payment initiative, allowed people to buy with the knowledge that they were unlikely to lose money. It was effective. It worked. It brought confidence back. Our influence is often overstated.

Turning to NAMA's wider activities, it is fair to say we are in a quite unusual position in NAMA. Many organisations spend a lot of time reminding people that they are bigger or more influential than it seems at first glance but in NAMA, we often need to do the opposite. One of our challenges is to remind people that our capacity to influence the residential property market is often overstated. We are not – indeed, we never were – the biggest property company in the world. In fact, we do not own the properties; our debtors do. Our loan book, currently valued at approximately €7 billion, is a fraction of the size of the loan books of the main Irish banks and one third of this loan book is outside Ireland. We are a long way from being the biggest property lender in Ireland, let alone the world.

Similarly, many think that NAMA is a dominant player in the housing market in Ireland but they should consider the following: there are 2 million homes in Ireland, only 6,000 or 0.3% of which are currently in the hands of NAMA debtors and nearly all of these 6,000 units are currently occupied by tenants - those which are not are actively on the market for sale by the relevant debtors and receivers. Therefore, there is really no hidden supply of houses that NAMA is keeping from the market. By and large, the houses that secure our loans are occupied and those that are not occupied are for sale to people who want to live in them or people who want to rent them to tenants.

However, I am pleased to say that NAMA is playing a significant role in delivering new houses and apartments, by working with our debtors and receivers on a commercial basis. We have already funded the completion of 2,700 new homes and we have previously announced plans to fund on a commercial basis the delivery up to 20,000 new units over the period 2016 to 2020. This strategy has twin benefits for the Irish taxpayer. The first is that investing in new housing will enhance the return we get from the assets in our portfolio. The second is that we are bringing much needed supply to the housing market, helping to ease the shortage that has emerged and making it easier for people to find a good place to live.

We have also worked hard, with our debtors and receivers, to do what we can to deliver social housing. There are limits to what we can do but we are pleased to have delivered to date more than 2,100 social housing units to local authorities or housing bodies. In fact, demand has been confirmed for 2,531 such units and in his presentation, Mr. McDonagh will take the committee through those figures in more detail. To put this figure in context, it represents approximately one third of all 5,700 Part V social housing units delivered from all sources throughout Ireland between 2002 and 2011. It is worth remembering that more than 550,000 new houses and apartments were built in Ireland during the period 2002 to 2011 and yet the total Part V dividend was only 5,700 social housing units.

In total, we have offered approximately 6,700 units for social housing purposes. This was the biggest number we could offer, as any other houses or apartments that were in our portfolio were either occupied or for sale. We could only have increased this number by moving tenants out of their homes which would have simply displaced one group of people by giving their homes to another group. It would have made no sense.

The difference between the 6,700 we offered and the 2,500 is explained by the fact that the final decision on what properties go into social housing is, quite properly, a matter for the local authorities and housing bodies. We understand why they make such decisions - primarily because the units were not in the locations where social housing was needed or they were too big or too small for their requirements.

As far as NAMA is concerned, we are always keen that any social housing we deliver will be to a high standard. So, for example, in cases where units were incomplete, we have spent more than €100 million to complete them. We also spent another €160 million to deliver social housing through National Asset Residential Properties Services, NARPS, which a special purpose company we set up to expedite the delivery of these units. It buys the properties from debtors and then leases them to voluntary and co-operative housing bodies, which puts less of a cash strain on those bodies. In short, we have made a significant input to social housing delivery to date and will continue to do so where possible.

Some people would have us believe there are easy answers to all of Ireland’s housing problems. I am sure that this committee, having sat for several sessions, knows that this is not the case. We do not agree either. There are barriers, which we can discuss later, but by working together, many of these can be overcome. I welcome the deliberations of this committee which, I believe, will identify and shape sustainable policy solutions.

NAMA will deliver 20,000 residential units by 2020 and will make a meaningful impact on housing supply, but any analysis that claims we can deliver all the homes that people need is mistaken. We have a mandate to invest commercially, use taxpayers' money wisely, and work professionally with our debtors and receivers to deliver the best financial return that can be achieved from the assets in our portfolio. Our plan to deliver 20,000 new units is ambitious and challenging, but we will do it in a manner consistent with our mandate. However, in terms of the important work of this committee, those 20,000 represent approximately one fifth of the estimated 100,000 units demanded between now and 2020. This means that other players will have to make a contribution. We want to get more people into more homes and we have every confidence that we will do so.

If the Chairman so wishes, I will now hand over to Mr. Brendan McDonagh to outline in more detail just how we will go about doing that.