Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

Our second problem is with the funding of the asset purchases and the year-by-year cost of the associated public debts. What are they? The third issue is the absence of any commitment to public accountability and oversight such as the procedures put in place in the USA's troubled assets relief programme, TARP, or in the programmes of Sweden and other countries which did nationalise their banks.

The first of these is the most important by far. The greater the write-down in the value of the banks' troubled assets, the lower the price paid by NAMA on behalf of taxpayers. However, in that case, the losses that the bank will have to absorb will be greater. Obviously the banks will want the write-down of their loan books to be as limited as possible because a more substantial write-down will expose them to the risk of insolvency. As I stated, €3.5 billion would vanish on foot of the €4.3 billion bad debt write-down by AIB. More money will be wasted unless we proceed properly.

Some Dublin stockbrokers have suggested a haircut of approximately 15% to 20%. That would imply a bill of over €50 billion for the taxpayer and would involve an immediate doubling of the national debt by that amount. If the scope of the write-down is limited to the sole purpose of preserving the cosmetic health of the banks' balance sheets, the decision will have been motivated by political rather than commercial reasons.

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