Mr. Brendan McDonagh:

No, the Deputy should listen. Fair is fair. If the local authority or an approved housing body had approached us to buy the portfolio we would have made every effort to try to accommodate them, but in many of the portfolios that were offered, no approach to buy them was made by the local authority or the approved housing bodies. Our obligation under the legislation passed by the Oireachtas is to get the money back to pay off the debt that was hanging over taxpayers, which is what we did. We had to sell assets. That is what we have to do, and we have to force debtors to sell assets, and they are assets that debtors do not want to sell, but we tell them that they must sell them.