Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 29 September 2016

Public Accounts Committee

Special Report No. 94 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: National Asset Management Agency Sale of Project Eagle

9:00 am

Mr. Seamus McCarthy:

No, and this is the point. It was a geographic strategy with, maybe, sectoral influences in it. The change that came about with the PIMCO approach was that suddenly they were talking about the debtors in Northern Ireland. If one likes, the focus then changes to a portfolio of property, some of which is in Northern Ireland, but some of which is in Germany or the UK. I think approximately 50% of the assets were in Northern Ireland and the balance - most of it - was in the UK, with some elements in London. What I am drawing attention to is that they had been focused on it on a province basis, that is, the location of the assets, but the PIMCO opportunity offered them a possibility of dealing with all of the debtors completely. That was, if one likes, the choice they were evaluating.