Kieran O'Donnell (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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Mr. McDonagh referred to the Committee of Public Accounts. One of the recommendations made by the Comptroller and Auditor General at the time was that there should be criteria for return on investment, a benchmark for NAMA, which the agency disputed. The question was raised again in the list of questions. It has been lost in some of the commentary that when NAMA was originally established, one of its purposes was to enable the banks to function by taking development loans off the balance sheet, both performing and non-performing loans, and also to get the maximum, optimum return for the taxpayer. It was not just about NAMA itself making a profit; it was about ensuring that the 60% write down on loans that went into NAMA – it was approximately 54% on average – was recovered as well. How can we be certain as a committee that NAMA is applying criteria to get the best possible return for the taxpayer, who had a serious investment in NAMA? While I welcome the fact that NAMA is making a profit but for our prudential role, we must ask why the agency fought the Comptroller and Auditor General, who is an independent commentator, against putting in place some criteria in terms of a return on investment that we could then measure in a case where NAMA states it made a loss of €140 million on the disposal of loans in Northern Ireland. We have no criteria to measure that against. I know we are going over old ground but I regard it as important. Could Mr. McDonagh explain why he is so reticent to allow a benchmark rate to be applied?