Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 25 October 2016

Public Accounts Committee

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

10:00 am

Mr. Donal Rooney:

To add more substance to one particular point that Mr. Collison made that our view was the portfolio was in decline, one needs to look at where NAMA's impairment was at in 2013 compared with where it eventually went. It is very important. If one looks at NAMA's overall impairment in 2013, it was in or around 18%. That increased to in or around 24% in 2015, so it increased. In 2013, what I call the premium impairment, that the Project Eagle portfolio had, was in or around 6%. The Project Eagle portfolio impairment was 24% in 2013 against NAMA's impairment of 18%. I think it is very fair to say that that gap would have remained. When one looks at NAMA's impairment in 2015 of 24%, that premium would have increased. NAMA's impairment on Project Eagle would have been somewhere possibly in the region of 30% with hedging.