Dr. Michael Somers:

Yes. Well, I supported the whole NAMA project initially. And, I mean, the Taoiseach said he went around the table and asked us all did we support it and I said "Yes." I, kind of, began to get cold feet then about it as time went on and I saw the implications of it and the idea that we'd hand vast amounts of money over to the banks. And I tried to persuade the Minister, and I failed on this, say, "Look, could we start with a few loans or something and see would that solve the problem. Why do we have to take everything from them? Or why can't we just, you know, get the banks to solve the thing and get them to pull in these loans that they've extended? Why do we have to do this? They created the problem and force them to do something about it." He didn't seem to have an appetite for that. I mean, he ... the whole Peter Bacon project ... he had met Peter Bacon somewhere or other, who had told him about this, kind of, project and he then rang me and said would I hire Peter Bacon, negotiate it with him, provide him with a room, etc., to produce a report to give him. And Peter Bacon produced this thing very fast. I thought actually, myself, that it would be turned down by the Department of Finance, because the one thing the Department of Finance were very good at was turning down things and I reckoned this would never get past them. But it did and suddenly it became Government policy and it took legs. And suddenly here we were with this thing and it was, kind of, semi-frightening that ... you know, that we were going to take on this huge liability and hand over all this money to the banks and I tried to see could I slow it down because, well, I never saw the likes of it before. And it was done in Sweden. You see, there was a Swedish model, but I think in Sweden it was only about 8% of their GNP. It was nothing like the vast thing that we had here in this country.