Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)

I thank the Minister for his reply. I understand NAMA intends to repay €7.5 billion of the bonds by the end of next year. The Minister set out the timeline for the redemption of the remaining bonds, namely, 25% of NAMA senior bonds will be paid by the end of 2013, 50% by the end of 2016, 90% by the end of 2019 and full repayment of NAMA senior bonds by the end of 2020. We should not nail ourselves down, however, to too rigid a schedule in redeeming these bonds but retain some level of flexibility. We do not want to engineer a situation where NAMA is forced to engage in fire sales or selling assets in a distressed market to redeem the bonds. I accept the bonds will have to be redeemed. In the fullness of time the objective of winding NAMA up by 2020 may well be ambitious and may have to be revisited given the scale of its work. We should retain flexibility. NAMA has sold many of its best assets abroad. The vast bulk of its sales have been foreign assets such as the gold-plated hotels in London and so forth. It will find it much more difficult when it gets down to the nitty gritty in Ireland. Will the Minister consider retaining flexibility on the redemption of the bonds?

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