Mr. Brendan McDonagh:

This is a point of disagreement between myself and Mr. McCarthy.

Back in 2015, when NAMA, with then Minister for Finance, Michael Noonan, set a 20,000 unit target, we only had planning for 13,800 units at that stage, but we said we would try to work it up through our portfolio to get planning for another 6,200 units and that if the debtors were still with us, we would provide funding. However, as land values and house prices increased substantially from 2015 onwards, many of the debtors who had land banks and who continued to build on that land were able to pay off their debts to NAMA and take themselves out of NAMA, so they were no longer available for us to provide funding, they got their funding elsewhere and buildings were completed. Through the support they had from NAMA, they were able to maintain planning to get them shovel ready, and then they went elsewhere and paid off their debts. That was the right thing to do for the taxpayer, that they paid off their debts and moved on. We would say we have been involved in 32,000 units. Direct funding was for more than 11,000 to the end of 2020-2021. We had the value to provide for the other 9,000, but if the debtors had left us and paid off their debts to the taxpayer, we could not hold them against their will.