Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Absolutely. There was a policy choice or a decision made at that time which was to bring these entities in. At least the Government is remaining consistent because it still thinks they should be here. It is defending the decision to invite them in, it is defending the decision to keep them here, and it is suggesting they are going to contribute even now to resolving the housing crisis. I put it to the Minister that every serious assessment of what has happened since these entities came in makes it clear they are contributing nothing. It is worse than that. They have made a bad situation worse because their intention was not to solve the crisis; their intention was to benefit from the crisis. In the process, they have made it worse.

What is the alternative? There was an alternative then and that was to have used the NAMA portfolio for what it should have been used for, and some of us were absolutely explicit in pleading-----