Mr. Brendan McDonagh:

To be fair to the Minister, he does not get involved in the day-to-day activities of NAMA. He expects me and the NAMA board to do our job as best we can and get the maximum value that we can in what we try to do every single day. However, the reality here was that if we did not do this transaction through the brother of the debtor providing the funding, these debtors would have commenced litigation; that is guaranteed. There is a long track record with these guys. It had already cost us €2.5 million in relation to assets in London. They would have started litigation. By the time 2025 came, we could have run up €200,000 in litigation costs so effectively the assets would be worth nothing. We would not have got €265,000. Mr. McCarthy could well be coming here in 2025 saying that NAMA had an opportunity to get €265,000, did not take it and now litigation has cost €200,000 and therefore it has lost €200,000 in the meantime by not actually engaging in the transaction.