Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 16 December 2015
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform
Operations and Functioning of NAMA: Discussion
2:30 pm
Mr. Brendan McDonagh:
Not all of those properties. I presume the Deputy is talking about the big real estate investment trusts, which have bought a fair amount of properties. The properties are openly marketed and people can bid against each other. Therefore, we get the best price we can at that point in time. There have also been a substantial number of properties that were bought by individuals who wanted to buy houses in various housing schemes that had been developed by our debtors. That is what happens in any market. We are satisfied that we got the best price at the time we sold them. We as a board had an obligation to generate cash to pay off our debt. We have repaid almost 80% of our debt, which was our target for the end of next year. We could not have achieved that without selling assets, be they residential properties, commercial properties, retail units or hotels. That was the nature of the portfolio.