Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am sure the Minister, Deputy Bruton, will agree at this stage there has been enormous concern about the sale of NAMA's Northern Ireland loan book to Cerberus Capital Management. This was raised in the Dáil last week by Deputy Mick Wallace, who raised serious concerns and made serious allegations. We know BBC Northern Ireland has carried out an extensive investigation in a programme yet to be aired, but some of its people have already spoken about it. Many statements have been publicly made by key stakeholders involved, and various leading politicians have denied any involvement whatsoever. I am minded of the remarks made by the Minister, Deputy Michael Noonan, to the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform in April 2014.

He asked the agency to conduct a review with a view to accelerating the sale of its loan book and bundling properties together. He stated: "I have asked [NAMA] if they have any suggestions on how we could work that and would it be possible to use it as a brake on the market." By this, he was asking what would be the consequences at the end of 2015 of taking the residual NAMA book and doing what IBRC did to its residual book in selling it off in a six-month period. One might now argue that one of the consequences was the kind of deal done with Project Eagle, where the entire Northern Ireland property portfolio of NAMA was put into one bundle and sold at a loss of around €200 million to NAMA and a discount of approximately 72%.

We now know that, essentially, £7 million ended up in an Isle of Man bank account. That is not contested. We know the money was in an account controlled by a former managing partner of Belfast law firm Tughans, which acted indirectly for Cerberus, the US investment firm that bought the loan book. We know Pimco, another large US firm, withdrew from a tender process for the same loan book, citing concerns about an unsolicited approach from a number of individuals.

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