Mr. John Collison:

I shall make a few points on that. First, we quoted the rate of enforcement on the Project Eagle portfolio at 39%, which is quite similar to the rate for the rest of the NAMA portfolio. If NAMA had not concluded the sale of Project Eagle, that percentage would have increased pretty substantially. I can think of at least three substantial enough connections that were being considered for enforcement in the run-up to Project Eagle. They were certainly heading in that direction.

There were 17 debtor connections out of the 55 in the Project Eagle portfolio that had absolutely no sales whatsoever recorded in the period 2010 to 2013. They had not generated one sale. That stood out completely against the rest of the NAMA portfolio. If one were to ask why the enforcement rate had not increased above and beyond the rate associated with the rest of the portfolio, I would contend some of these connections were later acquisitions. We took them in at a later point, maybe a few months later than some of the other connections that NAMA was dealing with. By the time we actually evaluated their strategies, we would have assessed all their business plans and put in place a strategy we felt might work. We were probably a few months behind some of the other connections we were dealing with down here. It was partly a timing issue, probably. If Project Eagle had happened a year later, I believe the enforcement rate would have been a lot higher but I can assure the committee that we have a monthly review of all connections in NAMA, on which we report to our CEO. Mr. McDonagh would be able to confirm this. From looking back over our records of some of those engagements at the time, I believe there was a history across the Project Eagle portfolio of failed milestones, difficult negotiations and debtors just not co-operating. I am not saying for a minute that we did not have difficulties with the debtors down here because we did. As a particular portfolio, however, this was an extremely difficult one to manage. It took up a huge amount of time in terms of our resources.