Mr. Brendan McDonagh:

The political relationship does not come into it as far as I am concerned, because I look at it from a business perspective.

The issue was that we had bought a portfolio for approximately €2.5 billion, but only €100 million worth of assets were sold between 2010 and 2013. This was too slow in terms of NAMA's lifecycle. We were putting a lot of pressure on the debtors to put assets on the market and do other things such as secure rental income to us. This is part of the process we do with all of our debtors whether in the North, the South, the UK or wherever else. These debtors were dragging their heels. They were coming up with all sorts of reasons that they did not want to sell the assets. We were getting very frustrated by this. We have a formal review of every debtor twice a year and the big debtors come to a decision-making authority. The biggest debtor goes to the board, the next biggest debtors go to the credit committee and the next layer of debtors go to me and somebody else. Nobody in NAMA can control anything as an individual. There must always be more than one person in terms of reviewing a debtor's case. The reality was that towards the end of 2013, we were at frustration point with some of the bigger debtors in the portfolio. We had this opportunity to sell the portfolio as a whole, but if we did not sell the portfolio we would have been going down the enforcement route. Obviously, I cannot discuss individual debtors here, but the Comptroller and Auditor General can look at it. On the files of some of the biggest debtors, it is clearly documented that effectively the debtors were not co-operating. They were missing their milestones and sales targets. We were then in a process, which we were obliged to do legally, of having fair procedures with debtors where we have to write to them and state they missed their milestones and give them an opportunity to fix that, and if they do not fix that we propose alternative action. Alternative action usually leads to enforcement unless the debtor accedes to it. That is the reality.