Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail)
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Maybe the liaison officer would circulate a note. We will ask the officer liaising between the Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General and our committee to circulate a note on that issue rather than going around the houses asking the Departments and everyone else. That will be sent out to us during the week and we are going to keep track of it.

Next is No.1657 B from Ms Mary Lawlor, communications department, NAMA, providing an information note requested by the committee on the €24 billion sale of underlying assets with a geographic breakdown of where the purchasers were located. She does not answer the question. The information is interesting, but when I read it for the third time, I realised she did not answer the question. There is a very short paragraph that I want to read out. We had asked for a note on the €24 billion sale of underlying assets with a geographic breakdown of where the purchasers were located. That was straightforward. The reply is three sentences:

Since inception, €24 billion has been generated from the sales of secured assets by NAMA debtors and receivers. Of this, €13.2 billion was generated from the sales of assets located outside of Ireland. Based on our analysis, the geographic location of the purchasers of assets located in Ireland is set out in the table.

They have given us a table but we asked for a breakdown of the €24 billion and the geographic breakdown of where the purchasers were located. In the second sentence, she confirms that €13.2 billion or 55% of the assets were located outside Ireland, but the banks and loans fell to the Irish taxpayer. I am not worried about where the property was that fell to the Irish taxpayer. Then she proceeds to give us a breakdown of the locations of the purchasers of the 45% of the assets that were located in Ireland. She only gave us a breakdown of a subset of the €24 billion. We will send it straight back and say we want the original question answered. She broke our question into two halves and answered one half of it. That is not satisfactory. We will note and publish it but we are writing back for a proper answer.

Next isNo. 1659 B from Mr Robert Watt, Secretary General, Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, providing information requested by the committee on the costs incurred by the State for the recent visit by Pope Francis to Ireland. The original inquiry referenced article 44.2 of the Constitution, which provides that the State guarantees not to endow any religion. We will note and publish the response. The response says that the Papal visit will not cost any more than the €20 million budget approved for the visit. That is one figure I want to put on the record.