David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I accept that. I will make one follow-on point and maybe Mr. McDonagh can come in then.

One lesson I learned from it in terms of my analysis of how loan sales work and how the management of assets work is that one argument that was made consistently by NAMA is that it must work in what it calls the real world where there are market solutions and market ways of doing things. In fact, there was criticism of some other organisations which perhaps might not have had that expertise, as was pointed out by NAMA, which I did not accept.

Something the market and those in the private sector who manage assets do is use the so-called "internal return rate" to set a benchmark and have a metric in order that one can measure what rate one gets back on individual assets, collective assets or loan sales, but Mr. Daly's organisation chose not do that. This made it more difficult for us to determine whether good or bad decisions were made. It goes back to the point I made, which is that once NAMA sold something, it could simply say that is the price it got and for all sorts of different reasons, these are the reasons the agency sold.

As a result of NAMA not setting an internal return rate, we, the Committee of Public Accounts, cannot say whether we can benchmark it against any objective. It is so subjective in terms of what could have happened that NAMA is off the hook. Does Mr. McDonagh accept that omission was a mistake from NAMA's perspective when we are talking about accountability and the Committee of Public Accounts being able to do its job? In terms of good practice and what happens in the real world, having an internal return rate would have been better practice. Does Mr. McDonagh accept that it would have been better for all of us all around if that had been in place?