Marc MacSharry (Sligo-Leitrim, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the witnesses. In terms of its headline performance, there is no doubt that NAMA has been a huge success. In terms of the Act that was provided, I say "Well done". We are going to make the money. The question is, however, as Deputy Connolly asked. At what cost has that come? It is a regret for me personally as a former finance spokesman in the Seanad when the Act went through in 60 hours that we did not have a NAMA No. 2 or No. 3 Bill to provide additional oversight and transparency through the process. However, with the tools NAMA was given, we are going to make the money, which is great, but at what cost?

I was watching on the monitor earlier as I had to pop out and Deputy Kelly was speaking to the witnesses about the potential disposal of the Player site. Mr. McDonagh made the point that it is likely, or at least possible, the debtor will have equity in the site and may well get to pay off all the debts and have some money left over, which is great. If I was Joe Bloggs, a NAMA debtor whose assets were disposed of in 2012, I might take the justifiable view that I was unlucky. If it had been the Player site, I might have ended up with money because a decision was taken to keep that asset while disposing of mine. That will be a question. As politicians, we have all had representations at our clinics over the years from people who felt they did not get optimum treatment in the NAMA process. Those questions will always linger. However, that is not the witnesses' fault. Section 10 was the overarching provision and Ministers of the day had the potential to give directions. The fact is that they did not.

For me that was a failing all along, in terms of some of the points Deputy Connolly made.

On a personal level, I would like to put on record that, notwithstanding that it is great money will be there, we will always look back and wonder if we could have done this so much differently and so much better, in terms of a social dividend and in terms of Ministers of whatever colour or creed displaying a level of agility and an interest to adjust the process along the way that could have given as good a return in the context of the financial payback to the Exchequer when that time came, and in the context of the cost, whether to developers, to small businesses or to the social dividend, social housing being addressed to a greater extent. The Player site debtor is in the lucky position where they may have a dividend at the end. In the case of the person where, for whatever reasons, although perfectly legitimate at the time, a decision was made to dispose of their assets at an earlier stage, there is probably going to be debt following them to their graves.

Earlier Mr. McDonagh made a reference to a meeting with the ECB, which made demands on him which were resisted and its representative ran out of the room. Fair play to Mr. McDonagh for doing that. It is an awful shame we did not do that on the sale of loan books by the pillar banks, where the ECB was applying extraordinary pressure for all of these things to be sold off. NAMA, the State and everybody else no longer have these problematic debts, some of which are performing. They have been sold off to third party organisations that are not even regulated in this country. It is a shame Governments, officials and decision-makers did not resist European pressure in that way, as Mr. McDonagh did back then, when he said he was not selling everything and that he was going to try to get the best he could. It is a shame we did not have that level of leadership in other quarters of this State, as was outlined earlier, that he showed when it came to standing up to the ECB at that time. As a former member of the banking inquiry committee which had to go down to Dublin Castle, or wherever that charade of an event was, to ask questions of Mr. Trichet, it was crystal clear that he threw us under the bus.

Can I ask Mr. McCarthy, given the complexities of NAMA and the number of different companies or whatever - we were given a good organisational chart - has he the diversity of resources and expertise at his disposal to give a really clear audit opinion on all those entities?