Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 4 July 2019

Public Accounts Committee

2017 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General
Chapter 21 - Accounts of the National Treasury Management Agency
National Treasury Management Agency Financial Statements 2018

9:00 am

Mr. Conor O'Kelly:

Government policy is not to buy for agencies such as ours or allow them to purchase property. That is probably for the purposes of precedent. It would probably cost €150 million to buy the building; even if we thought it was a good thing to do, if we spend €150 million on a building, that is €150 million that cannot be spent somewhere else. That is why we will not buy the building. I presume that if we owned the building, we would probably never sell it, so is there real value in buying it? We negotiated lower rents because of the type of lease and the Government covenant. That is probably the best way to extract value.

Comments

No comments

Log in or join to post a public comment.