Mr. Brendan McDonagh:

I thank the Senator for her question. As chief executive on the board of NAMA, and we have had many different people on the board of NAMA since the start, the board is very conscious of section 10 of the NAMA Act, which is the obligation to get the best achievable financial return. Mr. Carville is a Department of Finance official. In terms of NAMA, we have always tried to get the best achievable financial return. In the first three years of NAMA, between 2010 and 2013, the troika – the IMF, the ECB and the European Commission – was in town and tremendous pressure was applied, particularly by the ECB, on NAMA to sell down assets quickly so we would get rid of NAMA bonds. The NAMA bonds issued to the banks were Government-guaranteed, and this was a huge drag in terms of our going back into the bond markets. Therefore, we agreed, and the board agreed, that we would redeem 25% of the NAMA debt, which was €7.5 billion, by the end of 2013. After some considered and frank discussions with the troika, it accepted that. The reason we would not go any further than that is we did not want to engage in fire sales or selling stuff we believed would have better value by holding on to a bit longer to maximise the return. I recognise what the Senator is saying and there is much commentary on what NAMA should have sold or held on to longer. The reality, however, is that to allow the NTMA to get back into the debt markets to raise debts and take advantage of low interest rates, we needed to extinguish the Government-guaranteed bonds, which we did by 2017, which was three years early.

At all times, the board and I were conscious that we could stand over and defend whatever we sold. In this business, you have to make decisions based on the best information you have at the time. While people can look back five years later and say that this and that should not have been done, we made the right decisions at the time. We took advantage of available buyers to try to sell the assets at the right price, while taking account of the overall wider national interest, which was really important.