Shane Cassells (Meath West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

There have been a few senior analysis pieces done recently in national newspapers on the work of this committee, in this respect berating members, including the Chairman, for some of the approaches and on their questioning of NAMA officials and other senior witnesses. When NAMA officials have attended these meetings, they has been quite strong in attacking back, in particular, in terms of PIMCO, as Deputy McDonald has said, suggesting that it contrived to stay in the game, and yet this piece of documentation clearly shows that PIMCO went out of its way to try to be honest with the whole process. The credibility of all the statements by NAMA gets put on the table, and as we have seen in recent days with the US election, credibility is something that can be hard fought and easily lost. Given the aggressive nature of how NAMA has chosen to deal with this committee, its credibility gets brought into question. The core of this key piece of evidence in regard to PIMCO is that there is a clear assertion now that NAMA has been dishonest with this committee. The chief legal officer of PIMCO has not taken the decision lightly to write to this committee and state clearly that there is a very wide divergence between how it approached this matter and that it was honest from the get-go and the evidence that has been produced by NAMA to say to the contrary that PIMCO contrived merely to try to stay in the game and acquire this property. Therefore, the credibility of everything that has been put before us in terms of how we are assessing this gets brought into question.