Mr. Seamus McCarthy:

Regarding the letter of 8 July, we sent a copy of the third draft of the report to the Department in May 2016, and Mr. Harkness and Mr. Riordan met Mr. Reid and Mr. Carville and they went through the report. A number of issues were raised at the meeting. We expected a formal response from the Department, but for one reason or another it did not give us a formal response at that stage. When we received NAMA's response, we sent it what was to be the last draft of the report and the report was to be finalised. The letter is the response to the penultimate draft of the report. With regard to the issues raised in the letter, mainly what we included in the almost-last draft was a summary of the report. The point Ms Nolan made in the report was that we had not expressed in more or less the same way the points in the summary that we had in the body of the report. We made adjustments to take account of the issues she raised. I was satisfied at the end of the process, having considered what it put on the record, that we had dealt with everything it had raised.

With regard to the reference to the meeting, Ms Nolan was not at the meeting between Mr. Reid and Mr. Carville and my officials. The discount rate, and whether 5.5% or 10% was appropriate, was not discussed at the meeting at all, for the very simple reason that NAMA had not put it on the record. We only got a response on 10 June, which proposed that if we had done a loan workout value, we would have used the rate of 10%. It was not discussed with us. As the Deputy can see, it was not raised in the final letter from the Department of Finance.