Mr. Brian McEnery:

If I can. This is the reason I wanted to meet the Comptroller and Auditor General. I am transactions partner in our practice. I can see today that assets which have the HSE as a tenant in a 30 year lease are going at a discount of 7%. They have a 30 year covenant, and there is a harp on that lease. Effectively, they are State leases, and they are going at a 7% yield, and some even slightly higher. I fundamentally believe that an asset which has the HSE as a tenant going at approximately 7% is a fundamentally much better asset than the Northern Ireland portfolio, which was over 80% between Northern Ireland and the north of England.

I do not believe that a 5.5% discount was appropriate in valuing and discounting those cashflows. That is why I wanted to meet the Comptroller and Auditor General. I know of a number of instances where transactions do not go near a 5.5% discount.

To answer the Deputy's question, probably the best yield we got related to what was probably the best asset in the portfolio, which was about 3.6%. That was for the best asset, which was the Dundrum shopping centre. The truth of it is that if one takes what is now trading in the market, in 2016, which is a better market, with the HSE as a tenant, they can be transacted on the market at about a 7% discount on the cash flows. This report is saying that we should be using a 5.5% discount. I fundamentally think that anybody who is in the marketplace around discounting future cashflows to this lack of quality of a portfolio would say that is absolutely the wrong discount factor.