Mr. Frank Daly:

The Minister is required to review NAMA after three years and every five years after that to see if NAMA is doing its work properly and if its existence is required. As part of that the Minister endorsed the board's view that effectively we should take advantage of the market. We should sell assets and pay down the NAMA-Government guaranteed bonds as quickly as possible because they are a strain on Government finances.

The only way we can pay off the NAMA bonds is by selling assets. Collecting income is fine and we held assets for several years in the early stage, particularly in Ireland because we felt they were too cheap but we probably sold more into the market. When we deal with debtors we set milestones for them, saying we want the rents mandated and handed over to us unless they are paying off their debts in full. We also want them to sell a certain number of assets each year.

There was constant discussion with the Northern Ireland debtors who effectively said they were not putting the assets on the market. They were slow to put them on the market and would come up with all sorts of reasons for that. It is certainly frustrating for us because we want to deal consensually with them and our experience is that we work consensually with 70% of the debtors, 30% result in enforcement. If the debtor will not co-operate we have to engage in enforcement if we want to get control of the asset to sell it. We were heading in that direction with many of the remaining debtors in the Northern Ireland portfolio because they were stalling and it was getting to the point where we said the assets have to be sold and we believe now is the best time to sell them. The opportunity came along to sell the assets in one go. It was not one we were expecting but it came down to price and the price we could reasonably expect to get for them and whether they would represent value for money.