Mr. Seamus McCarthy:

Regarding the Deputy's first point on having staff in NAMA, a point I have put on the record on a number of occasions is that references to staff being embedded in NAMA, and an impression being given that everything that moves in NAMA is seen by and examined by somebody from my office, is absolutely incorrect. If everybody in the office was in NAMA we would not be able to exercise that level of control. It would not be an audit, it would be a control function. I have always corrected this impression when the matter has been put in front of me. The focus of our ongoing work is on the correctness of the financial statements and the operation of key controls, as we see it, regarding transactions that are accounted for, which we look at on a sample basis and not on a comprehensive basis.

When we came to look at the process in which NAMA engaged, our first point of reference was NAMA's policy. How it will sell assets or loans is clearly set out in a policy statement and guidelines. It has the option to depart from this for specific reasons, but in the course of the examination we asked where else had it used a single-phase procedure and it referenced only one, which started out as at two-phase process but it received only two bids - actually it was only one bid - and it was a very small asset. It has always operated a two-phase process.

In addition, when we looked at Project Arrow and Project Tower, we looked at the process to see whether NAMA had followed its own guidelines on how assets were to be disposed of. We looked at the advice it received from loan sale advisers. We reproduced in the report a piece of advice on why it is best to use a two-stage process, as the Deputy has described. To us, it seems fairly clear, unambiguous and well reasoned. It is easy to understand why it makes sense. We do not have to be market experts to state it would give us confidence in the price we would be likely to achieve at the end. Ultimately something can be sold only once, so when something is put on the market, if an appropriate process is followed and it is made as competitive as possible, while it may whittle down, at the end of the day I as an auditor looking at the price achieved will state the process gives me confidence that the price was the best available at that time in that market.