Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The sale of these CCNs, contingent capital notes, was kept very quiet and only announced several hours before it was completed. At €1 billion, this is the largest sale of a State asset this year and should be subject to proper scrutiny. The Minister gave many figures in his reply. It is clear from this and replies to other parliamentary questions that there has been a substantial reduction in returns on the notes to the Exchequer. One figure the Minister suggested is that the Exchequer will be down €18 million this year and €64 million next year as a result of this sale of CCNs. Many will ask how could we have lost such amounts and still announced it as a good development.

There is the question of who is the buyer of this CCN. If it were to be converted to capital, what percentage of the bank would the owner or owners have? There is also the question of who managed this sale. The Minister stated the shareholder management unit in the Department of Finance managed this. I do not want to cast any aspersions here but the head of that unit is Michael Torpey. While I wish him well, Michael Torpey will be Bank of Ireland's chief executive of its corporate and treasury division. There is a genuine question there without casting any aspersion on anyone-----

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