Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

The Minister referred in earlier responses to the principles of valuation and the valuation process. He referred to a firm of advisers, HSBC, in that process. Will the Minister agree that what is needed is a separate and independent valuation board, like the Swedish model, of independently qualified valuation people? In Sweden this included people from the academic sphere.

The same firms of lawyers and accountants seem to be acting for people in all parts of the process. One firm of lawyers acts for the Department of Finance, and is now acting for NAMA, and also acts for one of the covered institutions and was also quoted as an adviser to a consortium interested in buying into one of the banks. Similarly, one of the major accounting firms crops up as everybody's adviser, on all sides of this issue. I worked for an international accounting firm and I understand the concept of Chinese walls but in accounting and legal firms there are senior partners and more junior partners and staff. For example, if the senior partner is operating for a bank, one of the covered institutions, and some of the more junior partners down the pecking line are operating from NAMA, how does the Chines wall concept operate because the senior partners are the senior partners in any professional firm? I ask the Minister to expand on this aspect because it seems extraordinary that the same set of names crops up all the time for practically all the parties concerned. Do we have other firms of lawyers and accountants?

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