Mr. Brendan McDonagh:

Well, I think two things here, Deputy. NAMA was announced as a concept in the supplementary budget in April 2009. Work had to go on to prepare new legislation and that first draft of that legislation was published on 30 July 2009, it was put out for a consultation and it went back into the Dáil in the Second Stage and I think on 16 September 2009; and between 16 September 2009 and, I think, sometime around 21 or 22 November 2009, I think there was 400 amendments proposed to the legislation. And I think it was finally signed into law by the President towards the end of November 2009 and the board was brought into operation I think on 22 December 2009 and I was appointed chief executive on that day.

And that was fine in terms of a national piece of legislation, but we had no authority to start taking any loans from the banks until the European Commission gave approval. And the European Commission did not give approval to NAMA until the end of February 2010, and the first loan transfers started to transfer from the banks one month later, at the end of March 2010. And the loan transfers then continued on for effectively 18 months, but 95% of the loans were transferred to NAMA by the end of 2010.