Joanna Tuffy (Dublin Mid West, Labour)
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Question 107: To ask the Minister for Finance if, following the nationalisation of Anglo Irish Bank, his Department has requested that an audit be carried out to establish the assets the bank holds as regards housing developments, whether unoccupied or uncompleted, and land banks, with and without planning permission or outline planning permission for housing development, which are the result of loan defaults; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [10160/09]

Brian Lenihan Jnr (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)
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Anglo Irish Bank is operating as a going concern, being run on arm's length commercial basis. Accordingly, matters relating to the normal commercial business of the bank, which includes the management of assets held by the bank, whether acquired on foot of loan defaults or otherwise, are a matter for the Board of Anglo.

The Government's focus to date has been on asset quality generally and the larger exposures in Anglo Irish Bank. To this end a number of reports have been commissioned by the Financial Regulator to review the loan books and the capital position of six of the covered institutions as at 30th September 2008. PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL) carried out these reviews.

Furthermore, Due Diligence was carried out by Arthur Cox and Merrill Lynch between December and 14th January 2009. This work built on the work carried out by PWC and covered a detailed review of the top loans in the bank.

The summary version of the PwC report that I published on Friday 20th February 2009 provides a geographic and also a segmental breakdown of Anglo's development and investment loan books. This analysis indicates that investment in all stages of residential development account for circa 17% of Anglo's group total loan book.

As I have previously stated, I am not in a position to release the information contained in the relevant reports, other than what has been released to date, because of the commercially sensitive nature of the information.