Eamon Ryan (Dublin South, Green Party)

NAMA will be a small agency. It is correct that the banks should be used. Tens of thousands ordinary, decent, capable and enterprising people work in our banking system and we should not throw that away and say that they do not have a role in this. The Government can use their skills and credit management facilities to our purpose. The banks' shareholders have taken a hit, losing approximately €40 billion on shares. Trades unions, farmers and pensioners invested money in these shares. Many people have lost a fortune and no one is protecting the banks and their shareholders. Most of the money was lost, unfortunately, because of the fundamental mistakes made by the banks. That does not mean we proceed on a vindictive basis with our banking system. We will use those bank officials and the skills they have and turn them around to a new form of banking that suits our purpose.

People, including those in our party as much as elsewhere, still have questions about how NAMA will work, which we will attempt to answer. The crucial question concerns how we get a new banking system and how we can have a completely different culture where the obsession about selling property, car or simple loans turns into a banking system that is fit for the purpose we need now, namely, a clean, green energy, enterprise economy. Our banks, as we recapitalise them, will have to set themselves to that task and make their profits there. It may be less spectacular and speculative, but will probably be better over the long run, and it is what they have to do. We have to get them lending and we have to guarantee and show how that will be done as we go through Second Stage and Committee Stage of this Bill.

There must be further certainty around the valuation process, that is, where developers' equity exists or does not exist, which it will not in many cases because a deal might have been done in such a way that it was cross-securitised and the bank did not get the real value stitched down. The figures today are estimates. We are pursuing developers using the credit control facilities of the banks, and others, in a contract way that pursues developers to the nth degree, takes their houses if they cannot pay and gets the security back to the taxpayer. That is something people need to know. People need to know how they will be dealt with-----

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