Mr. Brendan McDonagh:

Yes. We have engaged with them the whole time. We engage with senior people and the chief executives all the time and we are always talking to them. In my experience and that of my colleagues, any chief executive in any local authority is very interested in the areas in his or her own local authority and what is going on there, as he or she should be. They would ask NAMA if we are involved in a particular piece of land in a town or if we are not. Sometimes everybody believes that NAMA owns all the land in the county and we would then have to say that certain land is not in our ownership at all. If we are asked if we have any idea who owns certain land we would put the local authority right by trying to find out if we could and let them know if Mr. X or Ms X owns a piece of land. Our policy from the start has been that if a local authority or a public body expresses an interest in any asset in NAMA we would get an independent valuation. We would let the local authority know that the independent valuation for a site is, for example, €2.6 million and ask the local authority if it wants to buy the site at that value. If it wants to buy the site the local authority or public body must close on it within three months. That is the type of deal we do. We always try to accommodate that aspect. NAMA does not own the loans or asset completely and we must go to the debtor to get him or her to agree to the sale. We must also got to the receiver for his or her agreement, but we have been able to accommodate this process.