Mr. Brendan McDonagh:

I do not think we are different to anyone else in the market. If money is left in the Central Bank, and we leave our money there or invest it in NTMA Exchequer notes, it is paying -0.4% on the money. We have €2 billion in cash at present. If we left it in the Central Bank we would get a -0.4% return. The board has a policy which effectively takes account of prudence and tries to see if we can invest the money to generate a return. It is very hard to generate a return without taking undue kept credit risk in this market. We might get a higher return but we could lose by not getting our capital back or things like that. NAMA is like any other private or public sector company at present. If we have cash and we put it on deposit in a financial institution, it will pay a negative interest rate.