David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein)
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Yes, and it said some other things. I am trying to avoid NAMA trying to divide and conquer the Department and the Comptroller and Auditor General to justify its analysis of the Comptroller and Auditor General's report, which was either a misunderstanding or a distortion of what the report stated. I will get to it, given that it follows logically from the next question. Ms Nolan said:

There is an underlying theme in the report that the alternative was to work out the loans until 2020. If I were to look at it from a policy point of view, I did not think that was an option given the difficulties there were in terms of the NAMA bonds, the ECB and the pressure we were under to reduce the debt. Just as we came out of the programme in January to March 2014, I do not think it was an option for us to decide not to sell a really large portfolio purely on the grounds that we might or might not get more money. We had to set a value and decide whether it was value for money. That is what NAMA did.

The Comptroller and Auditor General's report never said the assets should be kept until 2020. The Comptroller and Auditor General never said the 10% discount rate was a mistake to be applied to the Project Eagle loan sale. In the report, he argued that the 5.5% discount rate and the probable loss he talked about were to do with the change in sales strategy. All the documents we have received so far from NAMA outlined that there was a strategy in place to work out the assets over time and they could have been sold in 2014, 2015, 2016 or 2017. They could have been sold in different ways but the projection was to get back €1.49 billion. There was a change in strategy from a loan sale to an asset sale. This is the Comptroller and Auditor General's position on the probable loss. Does Ms Nolan accept that this is his position? If she does not, there is a misunderstanding of what is being said.