Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It is No. 1724B. It is only one page. NAMA had given us a breakdown of where the purchasers of NAMA property sold in Ireland were from and we asked for the breakdown of all secured assets worldwide. The letter indicates that the jurisdiction of the purchasers in respect of the €24 billion of secured assets, both Irish and foreign, is as follows: 33% of the purchasers were in Great Britain; 31% were in Ireland; 9% were in the USA; 5% were in Germany; and 22% were from "other", which figure relates to 45 individual purchasers in other countries. We will write back. What surprised me was the figure of only 9% for US companies. We want to know who was the ultimate owner. A US company might have set up a company in Ireland to buy assets. NAMA is telling us 31% of these assets were sold to Irish-based companies. I want to know if they were part of a group. This does not make sense to me. NAMA is playing games with the committee. It knows what we were looking for. We wanted to know the ultimate owner. The information provided does not tally with anybody's knowledge of these matters. We know many of these companies are controlled by American vulture funds. NAMA says only 9% of its sales are to US companies. There is a lack of candour in the answer and we want a full answer. We want to know the ultimate owners and NAMA has to know that. I am sure Cerberus alone accounts for more than 9% of NAMA sales. We want the full picture of the ultimate owners of the €24 billion of secured assets purchased from NAMA. I am finding that NAMA is not giving full answers. It probably hopes if we give it some information, we will accept that and move on but we will not. We have other correspondence on this.