Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will wrap up. I ask that NAMA send a note on its previous experience rather than have us discuss the matter further because the agency has criticised the Comptroller and Auditor General about his lack of expertise in loan sale valuation and sales process. NAMA said this was only its second sale. We want to know the scale of the first one and the extent of NAMA's loan sale experience prior to this event.

We will have to come back to the letter NAMA received from Lazard in which it stated that it was happy about the marketing process, despite the fact that it was not even aware why PIMCO had pulled out, that Brown Rudnick and Tughans were back on the scene on behalf of Cerberus or that a fee had been agreed between Cerberus and those two companies. Lazard was kept in the dark about all of that because the minutes of the board meeting indicate that Lazard would be informed after the meeting of the outcome of the decision in April that the bid was being accepted. NAMA might come back to us on that and it can even send us a note.

I ask people to look at page 103. It is a small point to which I referred earlier. A total of 11 board meetings were referred to from 12 September to 12 June. Most of them were attended by between five and eight members but three were ad hocmeetings. For example, only three people were present at the meeting held on 8 January. Other members were in contact on the phone. On 11 March there was another ad hocmeeting of the board and only two members were physically present, with the remainder in contact by telephone. On 3 April, when all the decisions were made, Mr. McDonagh was the only person physically there and everybody else was on the phone.

I have checked the NAMA legislation and there is specific provision in the legislation for attendance to be recorded by way of conference call once everybody can hear what everybody is saying. We understand that. Given that they were called at such short notice and the meetings were ad hoc, how did they get the board pack? Did they all have enough information? Given that 3 April was the key date when NAMA decided about Lazard, why did it rush it so quickly at an ad hocmeeting when only person could be there physically? Would it not have been better practice to try to ensure that more than one person was in the room at the time while acknowledging that the others were at the other end of the telephone?