Mr. Brendan McDonagh:

As I have stated previously, when we inherited a portfolio from the banks, there was no hand-over of information to us. The banks had very little information to give to us on the portfolio and we had to make a conservative projection of how much income we would receive from the assets. Thankfully, as it turned out, the assets were better located geographically. In addition, they were producing much more income than the banks had probably realised. The reason was that debtors were pocketing the income and not passing it over to the banks. As part of our detailed business plan exercise which started in 2010 and finished in early 2012, as the Comptroller and Auditor General noted, we looked at every single asset and asked whether it was income producing and, if so, where the income was going. We told debtors that if they wanted to work with NAMA, they had to mandate that income to NAMA and that if they would not do so voluntarily and were in default, we would have to appoint a receiver. The income from the assets, therefore, has been much stronger than we anticipated, based on the information available to us in early 2010.