Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

When the CSO made its submission to EUROSTAT, which I believe was last July, and when the initial draft legislation was being published, was there any reason no attention was drawn to this? The first I learned of it was when I read Matt Cooper's book approximately three weeks ago. He refers to the SPV in the book, but in the belief that NAMA is to own it. It emerged in the documentation the Minister's handed out last week that NAMA will not own it and that the agency is to be a minority stakeholder.

Will the Minister explain why the detail emerged in the fashion it did? It has only given rise to suspicion. If there is a considerable row and everyone is agonising over how to decrease expenditure by €4 billion this year, I can understand why the Minister would not want to exacerbate the problem by adding the NAMA-related liability to the national debt. However, the manner in which the detail has seeped out has not helped. I understand the Fine Gael amendment is seeking to put some kind of statutory scaffolding around the provision.

It is interesting to look at the EUROSTAT approval. I commented earlier that it has disappeared from the website for some reason. I presume there is no reference to it-----

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