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

I have a few comments. When the NAMA Bill was going through the Houses, I was in the Senate and said that this is all new territory and I would not be surprised if, as things evolved, there needed to be a NAMA No. 2 or No. 3 Bill. There never was. Perhaps it is my conspiratorial mind, but there is form here. We are having this exact discussion on the oversight of the IBRC liquidation. Given the way the legislation is written, history will record that Mr. McDonagh and Mr. Daly and the NAMA team have done an exceptional job. It is us who did not do such a good job in providing the necessary oversight and agility in that regard. History will also record that the overall effect of authorities in Northern Ireland extracting the building industry from the NAMA process here, notwithstanding any ongoing criminal investigations, allowed them to do deals all over the place and get back to normality an awful lot quicker than us.

Sadly, without the appropriate oversight, the only reflection mechanisms we have in this country are tribunals of inquiry and commissions of investigation. That is a failing in NAMA, but it is not a failing of the leadership of NAMA, who, under the legislation, has done as good a job as it could. It was envisaged that it would take 20 years and might make €1 billion; it will now be done in ten to 12 years and will make a profit of €4 billion. Those are the headline figures but there are a lot of individual stories where people may have gripes about how they were dealt with; the courts will deal with those.

There is form here, however. On reflection, we feel that the Oireachtas got it wrong, but we are doing precisely the same with the IBRC liquidation, except we have been highlighting it for two years now without any progress.