Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank our witnesses for being here today. Looking back on the body of work that NAMA has done, you would have to say that, by and large, it has completed the job. We could have arguments about whether at times sales were done with too much expediency and the taxpayer may not have gained a long-term benefit given property values and everything else. Over time, perhaps there were opportunities where sales could have achieved a higher value if we had waited longer. I accept that is all from the window of hindsight.

The real test for many people on the ground is those sites they see that are in NAMA's control. The one in my constituency that has caused a significant amount of concern is the Prospect Hill site. There are a large number of apartments there purchased by NAMA in 2010 for sale on the housing market in 2021. That is essentially a ten-year period during which the housing crisis grew in scale. The housing crisis did not land on us in 2014 or 2015. It had its roots in the myth that there was an overhang in housing supply and we know now that overhang was not there. Despite the narrative when NAMA was set up about there being too many houses and so on, clearly there were not a sufficient number of houses. I am using Prospect Hill as a way of trying to get an insight into how NAMA approached its requirement to fulfil social housing need or the broader housing function and whether enough emphasis was given, on reflection, to the provision of housing. Did NAMA also fall into that narrative of there being an oversupply and not prioritise the housing element of its remit? For example, I understand that the National Asset Residential Property Service, NARPS, still has not transferred to the Land Development Agency, LDA. Am I correct in saying that? There seems never to have been any sense of urgency in what NAMA has done with regard to housing, when there was urgency in getting stuff off its balance sheet. The Prospect Hill site, which has been empty for ten years and has only just been put on the market for sale, is an example in my constituency of a missed opportunity for housing and I am sure there are others.