Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Some fool - the organisation; I do not mean an individual. Mr. O'Connor is saying that the agency is acting as the banks' selling agent and auctioneer and finding people to buy properties. It is getting blue-chip purchasers who have no problem with mortgage approval. Nobody else would do that for the banks for nothing. I ask Mr. O'Connor to go away and think about that. The agency should be charging the banks they minimum fee that they would have to pay in the commercial market to get the same work done. While we need houses, I do not understand why we are finding buyers for banks free of charge. I do not get it. I ask Mr. O'Connor just to think about it. That is all I will say. Perhaps I am coming at it from a different perspective. I ask Mr. O'Connor to come back and tell me if there is a reason I am talking nonsense. On the face of it, I do not understand why we are doing it.

We glanced over the four-stage down to one-stage approval process. We had a bit of discussion and Mr. McCarthy was on top of it. This one-stage approval was much vaunted but Mr. McCarthy is saying chief executives are loath to take on a risk. I can understand why they would be. They are being asked to apply for a figure before a project has gone to tender. It is a little bit premature but the Department is going to hold them to that price, albeit they can be facilitated with tender inflation provided the €2 million cap is not exceeded. There is still a €2 million cap in the scheme. Did the Department sit down with the CCMA to work out if this single-stage approval process was one local authorities would run with or was it simply announced only for the authorities to say they were not interested? Will Mr. John McCarthy talk me through the process? Did they indicate that what the agency came up with was a good scheme? If they gave it the go-ahead, why are they not operating it?