Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

With respect to Mr. Carville, there is a kind of casualness in the tone. This is not a spin of the roulette wheel. These are people being paid extraordinary fees to take decisions. It is not a matter of "let us see what happens". The question, which is around the quality of the work that was done and the extent to which it reflected that obligation with regard to financial value for the State, is very serious. The reason I am going to build on that is we do not know, and there are questions because the outcomes - those outputs we can see and the outcomes many among the public can see - are many situations where it does not seem the best achievable financial return was delivered. It does not seem that the protection of the interests of the State and the public were best served. We do not have the detail on those decisions to know exactly why poor decisions were made. It is not a matter of "let us see what happens". Yes, absolutely, you cannot control all factors, but if you are getting poor outcomes on multiple occasions, then you need to look at and examine why. Then let us go to the question of examining exactly what has happened within NAMA.

Two serious problems we have here concern the commission of investigation and NAMA's actual accounts. One of the key points, and I agree with everybody who said it, is that this legislation should not be anywhere near us until the commission of investigation has published its report. The commission of investigation was established in 2017. It has looked for multiple extensions, and recently it has looked for another extension. I think the extension is until 31 October 2024. Are we going to have the final report of the commission of investigation? It seems to me it would be a basic that one would have a commission of investigation report prior to dissolving the thing that is being investigated. Second, within the legislation it is proposed that the final accounts of NAMA would be sent to the Comptroller and Auditor General and, I think, the Minister after the agency has been dissolved. Under head (18)(2) and (5), the Comptroller and Auditor General and the Minister would all get a report, with the final report on the accounts of NAMA, after the agency has been dissolved and when there is nobody to answer questions that may be raised by those matters.

Again, clearly the NAMA board and executive should be in place to be in a position to answer questions that might arise for the Comptroller and Auditor General, and indeed the Committee of Public Accounts and the finance committee, as appropriate, regarding what has occurred. There is a very strange matter here of trying to close it down before telling us what happened, and before the separate commission of investigation is able to publish its report and tell the public what happened. Is that not extraordinarily premature and is it not also a poor design in respect of head (18) in the proposed Bill?