Ms Michelle Murphy:

I will start with Deputy Ó Broin's questions. In terms of the EUROSTAT decision on Irish Water, there was no actual collateral. The way we would see this is that NAMA would be reconfigured as a housing body or housing agency, as recommended by NESC in its 2014 report, because NAMA has a special purpose vehicle that was approved in 2009 specifically to deal with property development. The key issue is that this SPV will have a majority of private equity. We would see the reconfigured NAMA taking the expertise from local authorities and using at least half of the money available from the Irish League of Credit Unions and then going to the markets to borrow at very low rates. The fact of the matter is this SPV has already been approved. The issue is how to reconfigure NAMA as a housing body to go out and borrow the money required to address the issue.

The question of who owns the stock is the issue. If the public private partnership model is to be used and if one is considered the economic owner, then the risk has to remain on balance sheet. Therefore, one would have to be considered not the economic owner. Therefore, the housing body which would have to be a separate entity would own the stock through the local authorities. We would see the local authorities being rolled into this.