Mr. Tom Parlon:

We raised some extra funding ... I just ... probably, the impression, and this discussion has all been about house building and about developing. But that's quite a... it's a minuscule part, as you can imagine, of CIF now. It probably only makes up 5% of the total activity within CIF.

At the peak in 1996 when we built ... or in 2006 rather, when we built over 90,000 houses, even then it was about half of the total of construction output. So, within the CIF, the main contractors, the electrical contractors, the other ... they would have a big input and probably a lot of concern that the focus, entirely, within CIF, was on house building and development, and ... and as a result of the ... the over-build in that area, bringing difficulties for the industry, for the country, and for workers, and so on ... so when concerns were raised, we ... the Irish House Builders ... the IH ... the Irish House Builders Association, you know, are a constituent organisation within the CIF ... they had their concerns in the lead-up to the establishment of NAMA. They sought the support of the CIF as the overall organisation and said: "Look it, we're majorly concerned here". We didn't invest in legal challenges or anything, we invested in a ... an external financial consultancy group from London, and we sought to raise funds amongst the builders themselves because it was fairly likely, when things were going downhill, that a main contractor that had no involvement and ... or wasn't going to have an involvement in NAMA ... so we sought an extra voluntary subscription from members.