Mr. Willie Soffe:

I remember that this was a project that was limited to residential land zonings. About 8% of the Project Eagle portfolio was residential. If one looks at the totality of the figures from the institutions that took part in this project, we were about one fifth. It was confined to residential.

Why was it done? It was done because there seemed to be a dearth of information about residential zonings throughout Northern Ireland and incomplete information about them. The approach that was made to us by the University of Ulster was one where it said, "Look, you and other financial institutions probably have loans in many of these residential properties. Can we have a project that identifies the totality of residential land on which there are loans throughout the province?" It is possible to go into any local authority or planning authority and find out what is happening in that particular local authority area. What was lacking was a total picture. We wanted to find out more about our own residential zonings up there because we were coming from a different jurisdiction and it was important to know the quality.

One of the things that emerged in the exercise was that there were a lot of residential zonings that created excess zoning. One could argue in quite a number of cases that maybe a structure would be returned to agricultural zoning. The whole purpose was to get a total picture in regard to Northern Ireland. NAMA funded a similar project here in the Republic but it was much larger. It was geographical information systems, GIS, project that the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government wanted. It gave information on all types of zoning, whether it was residential, industrial, agricultural or amenity - the whole lot- as well as a lot of information about flood plains, infrastructure deficits and all of that. That project has been completed and it is available for policy decision. The Department has it now and it gives information down through tremendous detail on every planning application and development plan.

This was a project to see if we could get a picture of residential zonings throughout the province or throughout Northern Ireland. It was high level and, as I said, there were no details of valuations or individual borrowers.