Mr. Brian Rowntree:

From my understanding, we were issued with a set of terms of reference by the main NAMA board at the very start. We worked to a direction of travel which was laid out by the main NAMA board. The majority of members of the Northern Ireland advisory committee were main NAMA board members. As an advisory forum, it was primarily driven from the main NAMA board. The forum, as I have already outlined, was seen as a consultative forum with no decision-making powers or capacity. The forum was one where, in the main, matters pertaining to discussions at the main board that had an impact on Northern Ireland were primarily discussed. There was not a huge degree of interrogation of other areas of activity within the Northern Ireland advisory committee and the minutes of the meeting indicate that. I have commented on the research which was something I was very keen on because we needed an evidence base to talk about the impact of what was happening in Northern Ireland. The land issues in Northern Ireland were totally different to those in the Republic of Ireland. We did not have a huge overhang of surplus housing. We had a history of people trading in land. As a consequence we had multiple debt portfolios around certain areas of land. One could see those debt portfolios increasing around the same land holdings because those lands were being traded-----