Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 8 October 2020

Public Accounts Committee

Special Report 109 of the Comptroller and Auditor General: National Asset Management Agency
National Asset Management Agency - Financial Statements 2019

11:30 am

Mr. Brendan McDonagh:

Yes. It made a conditional offer to us of around €29 million on the basis that we would indemnify it against anything that would be wrong with the assets, which we could not do, and that we would pay its due diligence costs of €250,000. We said we were not doing that and we would not do a deal with it on that basis. We negotiated those two things away, the indemnity and the €250,000. In January 2012, we became aware that there were developments in the Paddington asset which were going to increase its value and we decided to retain the Paddington asset. We had the loan over the asset itself, a 50% loan, but we also had the equity piece which the debtors had borrowed to put the equity into the Paddington asset. We took that loan out of Clairvue and there was an adjustment to the price from around €29 million down to €26.7 million. With that adjustment of €2.5 million or €2.6 million we ended up getting €1.1 million more subsequently on the back of taking it out of the loan.