Mr. Padraic Kissane:

Mr. Burgess made a point in response to the funds’ argument that they are only passing on the 3% rate from the ECB, but there is no visual of where their funding costs originate. It is fine for them to say the ECB has asked them to pass on interest rates, but we are already 3% above the European marketplace in the first instance, so we are now 6% above that, with 3% of that coming from the ECB. I posed the question more as a thought for the committee to consider. If an entity wants to validate 7.5%, it should show how it is validated and we can then say whether it is appropriate for a set of reasons. We have no reasons.

I decided I would not refer to Groundhog Day but I will do so nonetheless. I am raising the same sorts of concerns as those I raised many years ago, yet I have not received answers and nobody is able to explain it to me. On Lone Star's website, it is almost as though the fund is holding it up as showing how good it is at picking at the carcase of distressed economies. That is its market. If somebody tells me different, I will be the first to say I got it wrong. I do not know the answer to this, but I would be surprised if some of the pension and investment funds, behind some of which there are billions of euro, are not taking a five-, ten- or 20-year view on the purchasing of that fund. If they are not, that would not make sense to me given the market they are in.