Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

It is very likely that in this scenario, the Minister will be going regularly to the EU looking for approval for this on a continuing basis in the context of State aid. I am not sure that this has been thought through. The Government will probably need regular EU approval for State aid. We saw a memo today to the EU that dealt with Anglo Irish Bank on the eve of the bank's nationalisation and which claimed that everything was fine. I think there are severe problems with this entity and I would like to hear from the Minister how he gets over the essential contradictions at the heart of this particular creation.

Most people I meet on the street and at club functions and so on are actually worried to death about NAMA. They are worried about the implications for themselves and their families of the cost of the €54 billion that is riding on NAMA and for which they are responsible. Almost everybody I have met sees the SPV as some kind of clever accounting trick of the loop that was introduced at the last minute. They feel they will be even more exposed, as if they had been dealing with a fairground trickster. The debate on NAMA has lasted more than six months since the initial comments on the draft legislation before the summer. Until the week before last, at no point during the long debate had the Minister or any of his Government colleagues said that a vehicle of this nature would be a critical part of the entire NAMA architecture. That is why the sections of the Fine Gael proposal that set out minimum regulations with regard to the SPV are to be welcomed. While we will support those sections, we feel that our amendment addresses a more fundamental issue that arises in respect of this vehicle.

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