Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 28 September 2023

Public Accounts Committee

NAMA Financial Statements 2022 and Special Report 116 of the Comptroller and Auditor General

9:30 am

Mr. Brendan McDonagh:

The issue was construction costs, as I outlined in my presentation. I refer to that in appendix 1 to my opening statement. The overall cost of apartment development in 2021 when we sold the site had gone up by almost 18%. The plan for the Poolbeg site exclusively involved the development of apartments and with costs continuing to rise and the lack of funding availability, we got a good opportunity to sell to the other shareholder. The other shareholder made us an offer and we decided that it was the best thing to do for commercial reasons. We believed the value of our shareholding would have-----