Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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Did NAMA have a dialogue with the Department of Finance about being on the wrong track, given that we were heading into a housing crisis? I started raising the issue of housing mainly because there was a big investment in a multinational in the area where I live and we were seeing the upturn before other places. There was a big hire of 4,500 people and it sucked up whatever was available in the rental market before the recovery became visible. This was obvious in 2012 and 2013 in some places, but certainly in 2014. It seems, however, that many of these assets were bundled and there was a kind of a rush to sell in a rising market. They were being sold to particular funds that really were not dedicated to building houses. Was there any serious dialogue about changing course and did NAMA feed into that?