Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

That is the question. The Comptroller and Auditor General has audited these accounts every year since 2011 but they were never laid before the Oireachtas. We are writing today to NAMA and to the Minister for Finance asking them to explain why they were not laid before the Oireachtas. I will read one or two sentences from the Minister's reply.

The NAMA loans are not on the State balance sheet. EUROSTAT ruled that special purpose vehicles which were majority owned by private companies would be regarded as being outside of the government sector if they met a number of conditions. It was necessary under EUROSTAT rules to set up a special purpose vehicle, that is, a company to own NAMA, that would not be on the State balance sheet. That can only happen if the majority shareholding is held in private ownership. People may find this very strange. This is a mechanism to take major debts off the State balance sheet. The statistical office of the European Union, EUROSTAT, will only allow them to be taken off the State's balance sheet if the debts are majority owned, 51%, by private investors.

One newspaper picked up on the Minister's reply to my question on 10 October 2017. I had asked in respect of the 51% owners of the NAMA group, the shareholding of each of these persons and organisations and the amount of dividend paid to each in each year to date since NAMA was established.