Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

That was not the lens that was suggested when the Minister for Finance came to the Seanad or the Dáil. They were very open about this before this committee. The idea was not just to recover the amount of money that was paid. There were substantial haircuts.

Property prices were at some of the lowest points. Deputy Murphy mentioned substantial haircuts; for Irish Nationwide the average haircut was 72% and for Anglo it was between 60% and 70%. The intention was never to get just what was paid for it because that would have crystallised losses of €40 billion. I get a wee bit wound up about this because it is insulting to the Irish people. NAMA had €74 billion of loans. Was it able to recover them? Absolutely not. It would never have been able to recover €74 billion in loans. We know of the lending practices in, particularly, Nationwide and Anglo Irish Bank. There were very few assets underpinning some of those but there were assets underpinning other loans. Valued today, if those assets were managed, we would have made far more than the €5 billion the witnesses are talking about. Who is making money off those assets now? Speculators and developers are making hundreds of millions of euro on assets NAMA sold at a time when they were undervalued. The then Minister, Michael Noonan, made it clear from the Department the witnesses represent that it was a fire sale. He made the point he wanted to get a floor on the property market. The floor came at a price to the Irish taxpayer and the witnesses should acknowledge that.