Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

It will happen as part of the regulations in this Bill, as far as I understand. The people of Ireland have a slightly jaundiced view of the banks. People should remember that a long time ago the Insurance Corporation of Ireland debacle resulted in the Government bailing out AIB. There was no change at the top of the bank so it carried on in its merry way and we then found a few years later, as a result of a great enquiry undertaken in the Oireachtas by the Committee of Public Accounts chaired by the late Jim Mitchell, that the banks were the main organisers and participants in the largest tax dodging scheme in the history of the State through the deposit interest retention tax scheme and offshore accounts. The major banks in Ireland had to pay back more than £100 million in unpaid tax that they had facilitated.

After that, the mistake the Government at the time made - I forget who was in Government but it applies even if some of my colleagues were in Government - was that it did not make changes to the boards at the top levels of the banks. If we do not do it now we are telling the banks they should carry on their merry way and in another ten or 15 years' time they can do the same thing again. We have to force a cultural change in the bank and the best way of doing that is for every single director to go, otherwise we are saying everything is okay, something we cannot do.

I ask NAMA to dispose of the good loans which are being repaid. If they are coming in at full value and there are no problems, it should not be a problem for NAMA to off-load them as quickly as possible internationally to other financial institutions who will take over their management. That will produce a massive cash injection for NAMA early on in its proceedings. It will reduce the exposure for the taxpayer. The public of Ireland will see that some of these loans are producing real cash up front. We have no business setting up a State agency whose sole function will be to collect debts on good loans while another institution could be doing it on an international basis, once it pays NAMA for the value of doing that.

It goes without saying that there must be strong provisions in the legislation to prevent people from dealing with property that come under NAMA who have defaulted on previous loans. If somebody has a business which goes bust he or she is free to start again, but those whose assets have gone into NAMA, who have defaulted on NAMA, have gone through the courts, are found to have defaulted and ultimately do not pay their debts to NAMA, which will be the Irish taxpayer, should not be allowed to buy assets from NAMA two, three, four or five years on at a knock-down price. They will have done the taxpayer once and should not get the opportunity to do it a second time.

For a period of ten years NAMA should have to give its consent for the future and onward sale of any of its properties to ensure they never go to anybody who is a current defaulter of NAMA. The local councils have such a system in place, where if one buys a council house, one is supposed to get permission from the local authority before selling it on again. It is normal procedure for the original owner of the property to have the right to give consent and it would be very important to have such a measure in place. The Revenue Commissioners are very concerned about phoenix companies, that is, people who change companies and set up a new one. They stated they did not have sufficient powers to deal with the issue and the situation needs to be examined to make sure NAMA does not become the victim of phoenix directors.

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