Lorraine Higgins (Labour)
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It was reported in the national media in recent days that a property sold by NAMA one year ago managed to achieve a 136% increase in price when sold on earlier this year, which is astounding and not reflective of the Irish commercial property price increases that have been recorded in the past year. It raises the question of whether it was sold under value in the first instance and, if so, the reason for that. Why are we allowing corporate raiders, essentially Gordon Gekkos, to come to this country, asset-strip and sell on property, making a huge profit at the expense of Irish taxpayers?
I will give Mr. McDonagh the background to my suspicion regarding this issue. It has arisen as a result of what has happened with CHQ building, to which I referred earlier. I read in the Financial Timesrecently that a pension fund in the United States alleges that Blackstone, a company with which NAMA does a lot of business, entered into an agreement with another private equity company for the purpose of ensuring that they would not compete with one another for the purchase of property, thereby keeping the prices of properties down. They had set up special purpose vehicles for that purpose. What measures does NAMA have in place for dealing with those types of risk as they arise so that the Irish taxpayer can be assured of maximum bang for its buck when it comes to selling off property?