Mr. Brendan McDonagh:

It is not unusual that there is litigation with organisations like NAMA that are coming to the end of their lives. People start litigation and do not progress it to the next stage. You would hope it gets to a point where you can engage with them, and they agree to drop the case and both parties walk away. There are six cases that have been dormant for more than 12 months and usually when they are dormant, they do not come back. Sometimes the people in question do not want to spend any money to wind up the case. Maybe there are discussions to be had about whether both parties will bear their own costs. The costs in these cases have usually not been much at this point. People are leaving some of those cases dormant. Maybe they have their own issues with NAMA, or whatever the case may be. They may ask why they would withdraw the case. They know they will never do anything with it but they will leave it there to potentially annoy NAMA. It does not annoy me; it is just part of the job that has to be dealt with. It will be dealt with at some stage but if somebody is taking litigation against you, you can go into court after a number of years to ask the judge for a strike-out. However, our experience has been that judges are sometimes reluctant to do that. They want the other party to engage and say it wants to drop the case. Sometimes people engage and sometimes they do not. I assure the Deputy that the six dormant cases are not something that will ever affect the outcome of NAMA.