Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

I object to the way this Bill is being taken. The leader of the Labour Party has set out our concerns about the section of the Bill dealing with NAMA and the guarantee. In effect, it enables the establishment of NAMA and loans to be transferred at what will probably be very cheap prices. However, other parts of the Bill seriously deserve detailed scrutiny. Only in the past hour and a half I received from the Department of Finance - finally, after many requests - the schedule of the pension funds of the public bodies that will be transferred to and taken over by the State under this legislation. We will take over assets of €1.75 billion in those pensions funds but the liabilities, of which I have now been given a list, for the end of December 2008 run to more than €3 billion.

Based on a quick reading in the time I have had to glance at it, in the case of FÁS the State will take over assets of €328 million and liabilities of €683 million; in the case of Trinity College Dublin - assets of €245 million and liabilities of €554 million; and in the case of the National University of Ireland- assets of €6 million and liabilities of €13 million. In what Parliament in the world would one find, along with very important banking matters, the taking over of assets of €1.75 billion to give the national balance sheet a bit of a boost under technical EU and ECB rules and, at the same time, the taking over of unexamined pension liabilities of more than €3 billion where some of the pensions funds have a deficit of more than 50%? Everybody knows pensions funds have fallen in the crash.

I am also told in the note that the IPA and the ESRI pension funds will be added on Committee Stage.

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