Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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Forgiveness of debt in any loan portfolio is a commercial decision and I was not involved in second-guessing commercial decisions. If one reverses the position and says that the Minister, if he has any doubts about a transaction, should intervene and stop it, if one had some kind of provision like that, it would mean I would have to sit beside the chief executive of NAMA every time there was a sale and second-guess him and say: "You can go ahead with that; it looks like good value." or "You have to stop that one; it does not look like good value." That would be a ridiculous legal position. One is either in or out and the Minister for Finance is out. The former Minister, the late Brian Lenihan, was absolutely right in the way he couched this and the Oireachtas was absolutely right in the way it enacted it.