David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein)
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Mr. Soffe will remove the word "unsubstantiated". That is fair enough. Mr. Soffe strongly contests that any loss was incurred by NAMA, this £190 million loss the Comptroller and Auditor General talks about. I have studied the Comptroller and Auditor General's report in detail and he says that the loss happened when NAMA took a decision to embark on a loan sale strategy. It was a paper loss because the valuation at the time would have been based on the work out value of the assets and the strategy that NAMA was working towards. That was £1.49 billion. There is no issue about working out the cashflows. This was to do with the valuation. Nowhere does the Comptroller and Auditor General say that if and when a decision was taken by the board to embark on a loan sale strategy market rates would not apply. The Comptroller and Auditor General does not say that. He says that when the board made a decision to change strategy the value was £1.49 billion. To be fair to the Comptroller and Auditor General that is what he is saying. It is an important distinction that has been lost and there is maybe a disingenuous response to what he is saying. We have to be fair and factual about what he said in his report.