Mr. Seamus McCarthy:

It is important to recognise the distinction between the primary objective of NAMA, which was set in the legislation and not in Government policy, and the objectives in respect of the commercial and residential sectors, which were secondary to that. The first thing that had to be achieved was the securing of the best economic value that NAMA could achieve. For the record, as we have said in the report, the sites we are talking about that could accommodate the 86,000 residential units were all zoned for residential use. Other sites that were sold may not have had residential zoning but they were not taken into account in the 86,000 units. I looked back at what we had reported previously and even in 2015, one of the reasons for setting the objective of the 20,000 was it was recognised that sites that had been sold were no longer controlled. Effectively, there was only 9% development on the sites that had been sold by 2015.

It was recognised that selling it out ran the risk of no development or limited development going ahead and taking a longer time to deliver the residential units.