Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein)
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I do not accept that. We are pressed for time and I shall move on to another substantial issue. NAMA informed the Minister and he informed me through his reply to my parliamentary question that NAMA has sold off €1.9 billion in loans so far to date. I pursued the same line of questioning on debt write-down or debt forgiveness for developers with the delegation at our last meeting. It is clear that NAMA's stated policy is that there is no debt forgiveness for developers. The delegation went quite far in its previous comments to the committee to state that it wants to see every cent of the €72 billion of the loans recouped, and not just the €30 billion that was paid for them.

Regarding the €1.9 billion of loans sold, these are sold by NAMA to another agency. The other agency, or whoever holds the loans, has no responsibility. If NAMA purchased €72 billion worth of loans for €30 billion, the book value and the price paid were substantially different. Having sold €1.9 billion worth of loans, NAMA made a profit of just under €90 million, meaning it sold them for substantially less than the initial book value yet the company that now owns them has no requirement to pursue the full value. Even if it does, NAMA will never get the full value of the loan. Let us use the example that I am a NAMA debtor with a loan of €100 million owned by NAMA. If NAMA purchased the loan for €40 million and sold the loan to a third party for €41 million, there is no way NAMA will be able to pursue me to the end of the earth for the remaining €59 million. NAMA has sold €1.9 billion of loans and it is a case of debt forgiveness for developers. NAMA will not be able to get back the full loan book value of those loans. I ask the witnesses to explain that in the context of the previous questions. Have these loans been put on the market in a competitive way?