Mr. Brendan McDonagh:

The board has had a very deliberate strategy since it started off in its first strategic plan in 2010 as saying we will sell the overseas markets because those markets are very buoyant with a lot of buyers. If one looks at where NAMA's overseas assets remain, about €7 billion of the €9 billion in overseas assets are in the UK, primarily in London and the south east, and about €2 billion of the overseas assets are in three other locations by value: Germany, France and the US. They are places where there is liquidity and activity so one can get those assets sold. It has been very deliberate on the part of the board of NAMA strategy to say that we will sell the overseas assets, asset manage the Irish assets, take the income earned on the Irish assets and sell them at the appropriate time.

If one thinks about it in terms of this, and this is really just common sense, if one has income-producing Irish assets that are giving an income of 8% to 9% per annum, and that was up until the start of this year, and now the yield from those assets has contracted and is coming down more towards 7%, which means that the price of the assets has risen, one is better off to take the income, wait for the yields to contract and sell them at a realistic level. That is what this is about.