Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

I welcome the concessions made by the Minister on the advice of the Attorney General to give legal recognition to the SPV in the Bill. That is a positive step.

In section 4, the definition of a NAMA group entity on page 20 is "a subsidiary of NAMA" and so on, and reference is made to "any other body corporate and any trust, partnership," etc. The Labour Party has put forward an amendment in section 17 to extend that definition to include the SPV, in the context of it having a minority or majority share in a vehicle. In addition to the concessions the Minister has made, it is necessary to recognise the kind of vehicle this is because it is not majority owned. The Minister may be clear in his mind that this vehicle cannot have further subsidiaries or associates - I do not want to go into the tax issue but if people were clever enough they could put these offshore - but we need a lot more specific, technical prevention measures introduced. Will the Minister check this out with the Attorney General? Will he agree to do that?

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