Paul Connaughton Snr (Galway East, Fine Gael)

I am looking forward to the vote on the end of Second Stage of the Bill and will vote against it. This is one of the biggest gambles I have seen in the House in 30 years and like all gambles, nobody knows where it will finish. It is bad enough that the ordinary members of the public would not know or might not be expected to know where it will finish, but nor do the Minister for Finance, the Taoiseach or the Government.

One of the major reasons the people voted "Yes" in the Lisbon treaty referendum last Friday was because of the fear of the financial problems coming down the road. They believe the European Central Bank is becoming an anchor tenant for Ireland and believe that is from where the bailout will come. I hear Government commentators say regularly that the ECB promoted the idea of NAMA. I am not sure we are handling the situation the way it wanted us to, but it will be central to it. We are lucky the people of Ireland responded as they did on Friday. I hope, for everybody's sake, this solution will work.

I would like to give a background to the situation from where I stand. It is a result of nothing but pure greed. That greed was shared by developers and builders and accommodated by the Government. Together they formed a cosy cartel. For that reason, the people, no matter if they must wait five weeks, five months or two years for the Government to go to the polls, want to get this Government out. They know they have been scuttled. I will give the House an idea of how this happened, as it has not been mentioned often in the debate so far.

Look for example at the countless thousands of young couples who bought houses at twice their value over the past five or six years. These prices were as a result of the greed of the property developers, builders, economists, banks and all involved. Now, these young couples face a drop in equity, but as long as they continue to live in their houses, they will get over that. However, as interest rates increase, they will be in a far worse situation. Worse still is that because of NAMA — there is no free lunch — these same people will end up bailing out the people who caused them to pay twice the value of their house in the first place. Young couples all over the country believed they were doing the right thing when they bought their homes because every night on television economists from financial institutions, a Minister or a Taoiseach, including the current and previous taoisigh, told them that the fundamentals of the economy were all right, that we had people in work and, in other words, they believed the prices young couples were paying for houses were good value for money. That sort of rubbish went on for four, five or six years, but the economy was a bubble. It would not have worked in any country.

Now we have found ourselves in a terrible situation. Young people are paying twice the repayment on a house they should have to pay, but if they had to sell the house they would be ruined. At the same time, the NAMA solution will be brought forward. There is no such thing as a free lunch. Sometimes Ministers try to get the message across that because of NAMA there will be no real cost, because after five or ten years the various properties will reach market value again. Where could one borrow €54 billion on behalf of the State without a cost to someone? Who is going to pay this money back? It is very unlikely the builders or the banks will repay it. They will come out from under the canvas yet. It is because of this there is latent anger all over the country against the Government that allowed this to happen.

We hope serious amendments will be introduced to the NAMA legislation. I will not go through our proposals now, but there will be serious discussion in the Chamber on the amendments and, hopefully, the Government will yield to them. If the Government cannot ensure that the banks do not featherbed their reserves to build themselves up, and ultimately if the money does not return to the economy to provide jobs and help generate activity, then the anger will cut loose altogether. Insufficient thought has been given to this because it is an easy way out for the banks.

With regard to the Fine Gael concept of a good bank and a bad bank, at least pressure and responsibility would be put on the individual banks to try to straighten out what they had walked into at a time when even non-economists could see the banking system could not sustain such activity. My constituents in Galway East and people further afield are asking me whether anybody will actually be brought to boot for this. Will anybody be brought to court and sent to prison for the terrible problem that has beset thousands of Irish couples, for which they will be paying for the next 30 or 40 years? As far as I can see there will be very few and the process will be very slow.

The principle of the Bill is wrong and the gamble is too great. Should the slightest thing go wrong, we will ensure that countless thousands for two generations to come will be saddled with something they had not a hand, act or part in. From a rural Ireland viewpoint, the 80% capital gains tax that is being proposed as an amendment to the Bill is outrageous for land compulsorily acquired for road building. That land was not rezoned. It was acquired for a specific purpose, to build the roads. I do not have time to talk about the problems such acquisitions cause for farmers, but this process has put them out of business. When one considers the national good created, and that countless thousands will use those roads for generations to come for the benefit of all, the fact that the people who own the land will have to face an 80% charge is outrageous. I assume this will be given much greater scrutiny over the next couple of weeks because it is a bombshell in rural Ireland, something none of us can put up with.

I heard the former Minister for Finance, Deputy Charlie McCreevy, say glibly here one day, in explanation, when there was some type of pressure on the budget: "If I have it, lads, I'll spend it and if I haven't, I cannot". What way is that to run an economy?

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