Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

Not only are Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide going into the NAMA process but there is also discussion in the media, and this is permissible under the Bill, about the possibility of institutions such as Ulster Bank having assets up to €15 billion parked in some kind of quarantine process which may, at some stage, enter the NAMA process. Given that Ulster Bank is owned by Royal Bank of Scotland and that a number of other institutions are foreign owned, what is the reference to prohibition in "any applicable law"? In my reading of the section it means that when a bank or credit institution applies to join the NAMA scheme it is, correctly, required to supply information and so on. However, the Minister has introduced an amendment to qualify that requirement by taking into account prohibitions in applicable laws. These exist in many jurisdictions where there is banking confidentiality, not to mention tax confidentiality. Such jurisdictions, which are used for tax avoidance and mitigation, specifically have such prohibitions.

This measure reminds us of the special purpose vehicle measure. This kind of stuff is being added to the Bill at this point to limit what NAMA can do to receive full accounting from those institutions which will benefit from the taxpayers' guarantee of €54 billion. Why is the Minister adding more measures to enable applicants to hide behind overseas legislation and to qualify consents?

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