Mr. Brendan McDonagh:

Well I suppose, even though I said it, I wasn't just basing it on my own view, Deputy.

I mean, we have met other countries who have had difficulties in their banking system. They have come to talk to us about the model pursued by NAMA and, you know ... and the type of approach, and they have followed it. It has been endorsed both by the IMF and the ECB as being the right thing to do. And I suppose I would, you know, in a very, I suppose, local way look at the way, I suppose, you know, we took the assets - these problem assets - out of the banking system, brought them into NAMA and had to deal with them. And it's a very expensive consequence for the taxpayer, who's had to recapitalise on the back of that, but I think when you look at the assets which remain within the banking system, the banking system has been quite slow to deal with their existing assets. And, whereas, you know ... in terms of NAMA, like, we're five years in, we've collected €25 billion in cash and we were originally designed to maybe ... that everybody expected we'd have a ten-year life, and now we're sort of saying we'll probably be finished in eight years. So I think, you know, we are doing what it says on the tin. It says ... the Act says, deal with the assets expeditiously, and we're getting on and doing that.

As the chairman says in his own remarks, it'll be for others to judge whether we did a good or bad job at the end, but, you know, we believe that we're, you know, to date that we're doing everything that we are expected to do and trying to deal with the situation and the hand that we're dealt with.