Alan Kelly (Tipperary, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Sorry, I said this was a statement, not a question. This is the Committee of Public Accounts. We ask the questions. That is my first statement, and I will make another one at the end of my contribution.

My first question relates to page 2 of the witnesses' soliloquy, or whatever we will call it. They state:

Selling in more than one lot would, in our view, have delivered an inferior commercial outcome. The portfolio had a lot of secondary assets and we simply could not have achieved an acceptable price if those assets had not been bundled with better quality assets.

How did they know that? Lazard did not do any analysis regarding the value of the assets beforehand. That is a big statement.