Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

The witnesses are very welcome. Mr. Soffe said in his statement that there was an obligation placed on NAMA by the Oireachtas to do its business commercially and expeditiously. NAMA also had a policy of openly marketing loan sales but it deviated from that with the Project Eagle sale. It was only very late in the day that other bidders were invited into the process and the timeline seems to have been incredibly tight in terms of assimilating the kind of information that would have been in the data room for other bidders to properly consider any bid they would make. I ask Mr. Soffe to respond to that.

The sales process was a singular sales process, as opposed to a two-phased process where one opens it up to a wider group. Obviously, people have to make a declaration not to disclose commercial information and then it is narrowed down to a shortlist of preferred bidders. Would that be the way NAMA would normally have approached other sales processes? If so, why did this one deviate from the norm?