Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 26 September 2013
Public Accounts Committee
Annual Report and Financial Statements 2012: Discussion with National Asset Management Agency
10:50 am
Mr. Brendan McDonagh:
Yes. The impairment exercise is as much a mathematical exercise as anything. One puts all of the cashflows in and discounts them back using - I do not want to get technical - what the International Financial Reporting Standards, IFRS, call an "effective interest rate". The effective interest rate for a NAMA portfolio is, on average, about 5%. One accrues income and discounts it back. One also accrues an income on assets which are not income generating, like land, and 5% is discounted back. Depending on when one is going to put it up for sale, and purely as a mathematical exercise, if one is going to put it up for sale in 2013 or 2016, that would have an effect on what the impairment figure is going to be and the discounted value versus carrying value. That is how one calculates one's impairments.