Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank Mr. McDonagh. We will return presently to other Deputies who might have follow-up questions. To return to the overall sums, the par value is €74.4 billion, having been bought by NAMA for €31.8 billion. The agency has a surplus of €4.2 billion and that will, one hopes, go closer to €5 billion, although that still leaves us in the region of almost €38 billion short in terms of the hit to the public purse. We know how that grates with the public following the bank bailout. Mr. McDonagh confirmed that the troika held hard on that and the Government told NAMA to start selling off properties quickly to try to satisfy the troika. It is accepted that if NAMA had been able to wait longer, the value of the properties would have increased considerably. There were fire sales, basically.

I recall from that period that much of the property was bundled into quite large portfolios, which meant there was a limited number of bidders or people who were able to raise the finance to bid and acquire those loans.

Is it the case or would I be correct in saying that had more time been available and had many of those parcels of properties or portfolios been broken down into smaller lots there would have been more bidders? Over the last seven or eight years many economists have raised this issue, that the size of the portfolios meant that NAMA was down to less than a handful of financial institutions or investment funds, and in some cases one or two, that had the firepower to be able to buy them. Is it the case that if they had been broken down into smaller lots, there would have been more bidders available?