Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Investors buy shares to make money. They do so to avail of a dividend or, alternatively, capital gains. With distressed assets, investors usually go in for the capital gains that may accrue. It is worth pointing out that the purchasers of the shares this morning are also private investors so there is no diminution of the private investor share. It has just moved from one single investor to a number of private investors who paid what they thought was value in the market at 26.5 cent per share. One can debate whether or not 10 cent was a very low price on offer in the first instance but it went from 10 cent on the open market to 8 cent and stayed there for about six months. At one period, it traded at 7 cent. If anybody is very wise in retrospect, they should have been wise at the time, bought the shares at 8 cent and made even more than Mr. Ross made on the transaction.

In talking about retrospect capitalisation, the Deputy is really stitching a major issue on to the tail end of a debate on a Topical Issue. If he raises it in the next round of finance questions, we could have a full discussion on it but we do not really have time to do this issue justice today. It is still being pursued.

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