Brian Lenihan Jnr (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)

I do not agree it is superfluous. The Deputy's question is why the National Asset Management Agency loans are not simply left in the recovery bank. The whole purpose of NAMA is to deal on a systematic, national, cross-bank basis with all of the toxic loans and all the loans in the land and development sector. This was essential because of the cross-collateralisation of exposures throughout the banking system. As was made clear during the debate on NAMA, the exposure by particular developers across a range of banks made it essential that we establish an agency that would deal with those exposures on a systematic basis. There were a large number of individuals who had such cross-systemic exposures that required to be dealt with in a structured way.

One question which the Deputy did not pose but which follows on from his question was whether we considered putting the rest of the Anglo Irish Bank loan book into NAMA - doing it the other way around, if one likes. The answer is that NAMA is busy enough with the amount of work in hand. The remainder of the non-NAMA book in the bank is not concentrated on land and development matters but constitutes general business lending. It is a matter of public record that there is only one very substantial customer of the systemic type, of which a number transferred with the NAMA book.

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