Mr. Seamus McCarthy:

I do see NAMA's point about the idea of putting the whole portfolio together, so that one is not left with the rump. That is NAMA's argument.

On the other hand, we have looked at other loan portfolio sales where there was advice from loan sales advisers as to what was the best way to put a portfolio together, to put it into packages, to look at who was looking for what kind of assets. We did not see any of that in relation to Project Eagle. It was quite simply we will work it out or we will sell it all as a single loan portfolio. It might be instructive for the committee to see the Lazard documents. I know the committee has asked to see them and I presume they are coming to it. From these, the committee will see nothing in them about how to shape the portfolio. If one were to look at the tender submitted by the loan sale advisers for Project Arrow - their bidding for the work, their analysis of the market, who is available to buy a portfolio of this size, what way the portfolio is put together - is remarkably different. It explains the logic of the thing in good sense. What it did with Project Arrow was that it took some of the better assets and sold them separately.

There are strategic responses that might have been available to NAMA but we do not see any of that kind of analysis. Lazard was not asked to produce that kind of advice for NAMA. That leaves me with a concern - one that remains with me - that it may not have approached it strategically. I am not going to try to say what was the alternative best way to sell it. I would not attempt to do that. However, it could have got advice to assist it, taking the temperature of the market at the time and looking at who is interested in buying loans of what kind and what sort of tranches and so on. I would have much more of a sense of assurance that the market then had given the best price.