Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

The purpose of amendment No. 4 is to provide for the appointment of an oversight committee. This debate on Report Stage is, in effect, the last serious opportunity we have in the Dáil to try, on behalf of citizens and taxpayers, to correct the dreadful flaws in the Minister's proposals for NAMA. I refer in particular to the decision to overpay for the assets by a factor of at least €7 billion and possibly €11 billion or €12 billion.

The Bill does not deal at all with the extra recapitalisation that is likely to be necessary for the two main banks. The sums involved are likely to amount to at least a further €9 billion to €12 billion. The Bill does not refer to the recapitalisation of Irish Nationwide and EBS, which is likely to cost €1.5 billion, although the Minister is giving himself the power in the legislation to take a share in those institutions. No sums are mentioned.

The Bill makes provision for some of the largest, if not the largest, financial commitments ever made on a single occasion in a single Bill in the history of the State, yet major amendments are being tabled on Report Stage. The purpose of the oversight committee is to copy what has successfully happened in other countries where there have been banking crises. Since the beginning of banking, there have been bank failures. There is a considerable amount of literature, including historical literature, available throughout the world on how to try to fix a failed, broken banking system. The key lesson to be learned from recent examples and from history, in so far as Fianna Fáil is capable of taking a history lesson, is that unless there is a high level of transparency and oversight, the whole exercise is likely to prove a failure.

One can ask why that is the case. It is because as soon as bankers get the green light from the Government, the Minister, the king, the emir of the day, they are likely to run back and start to do exactly the same thing that led to the crash in the first place. That is why we see already that in anticipation of NAMA the banks are tightening up on credit rather than complying with the express purpose of providing credit to small and medium businesses. They are calling in businesses right around the country to put the thumb-screws on them and make things more difficult rather than less difficult.

The Labour Party proposal is for an oversight committee, based partly on the model in the United States and based on the advice we got from people in the Swedish bank rescue, that would report to the Dáil every 30 days. It does not cut across a possible special Dáil committee but it is different from it and much more essential than such a committee because the purpose of this is to put information into the public domain that not only allows the Dáil to be informed about what is happening in NAMA every 30 days but that would inform citizens, in particular journalists and citizens who are doing citizen journalism on the web and through blogs. In this crisis it has been so important in this country to have information about what is happening in our name. I see the Minister, as on the previous day when I mentioned citizen journalism and citizen bloggers-----

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