Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

I move amendment No.12:

In page 17, between lines 17 and 18, to insert the following:

3.—Every 30 days NAMA shall report to Dáil Éireann setting out details of its operation including the identities of the owners of, and particulars (including value) of, any assets acquired by it during the period in question valued at over €100,000.".

As we know, NAMA is taking over loans, good and bad, but mainly distressed loans with a smaller proportion of some good loans that we do not quite know the context of just yet. In turn, those are loans that were mainly given to people in the property development business. The purpose of the amendment is to ensure that every 30 days NAMA would report to the Dáil setting out details of its operations. We have several other amendments seeking that as well, including the oversight reporting. We also want "the identities of the owners of, and particulars (including value) of, any assets acquired by NAMA during the period in question valued at over €100,000". I seek this in the interest of transparency.

People in the streets and shops of every town and village in Ireland are asking how the banks came to this and who are the people involved. We know there are a top 100 developers and that the top ten to 15 are likely to be dealt with before Christmas. Given the vast amounts of money involved, it is not unreasonable that we should know the identities. If there are legal disputes, and there have been a number already, the court cases give the full details. It appears to be proving particularly difficult for the Government and the Irish public service to concede the notion that where the State is offering a bailout of €54 billion, with more being provided in the future in terms of cash injections into the banks, the fundamental rules of democratic transparency require that information should be available on who are the beneficiaries and the connected parties.

These are troubled loans which the banks gave to the developers. We are told there are up to 2,000 such loans. It is quite easy to categorise them and to provide summary details. One of the reasons people have so little trust in the Government is that they know it did everything it could to remain in denial for a long period about Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide being in trouble. That caused the ultimate crash to be far worse, mainly because the former Taoiseach operated in a particular way and Deputy Brian Cowen, as Minister for Finance, could not bring himself to believe that Anglo Irish Bank was going to crash. However, the dogs on the street knew that Anglo Irish Bank's business model was bust. That bank was basically a developers' bank as was clear from the draft report the Department sent to Brussels, which was released to me under the Freedom of Information Act after I spent approximately six months tiptoeing around the Department of Finance. This report showed that as late as 8 January, and the bank was nationalised a couple of days later, the Department of Finance was telling Brussels that this was a niche bank and that it was fundamentally sound.

If we are to get out of this situation, that is, reach the bottom and start upwards again, there must be a great deal of honesty and transparency. The Minister will say there is a sacred bond of confidentiality between a banker and clients, but this is not an ordinary situation. This is an economic emergency, caused by incredibly bad, rash, stupid and greedy behaviour on the part of the bankers and developers. The bankers ought to have exercised caution and said to some of the developers: "Look, €400 million for that site is mad." However, they were getting the fees and the bonuses, so they continued as they were. The amendment aims to provide some level of understanding to citizens about what is involved in this. Again, if the Government envisages having some type of national contract for recovery in which it is asking people on very modest incomes to take very savage hits, it must show that the harsh medicine Fianna Fáil is anxious to dole out to the little people is somehow balanced by the fact that it will be fearless in disclosing what happened and who owed what, where the amounts are significant.

People regularly ask me why the situation is different in the United States. The case of Bernie Madoff is the most famous but there are others, such as Marc Dreier in New York who defrauded the hedge funds of $5 billion or $6 billion and was sentenced to 20 years in jail. It did not merit much coverage in Ireland. In the American system the crash was awful but there was a great deal of transparency about what caused it. It was a similar situation in Sweden. Transparency to the citizens is the beginning of the rebuilding of trust, because people then understand what happened and how awful it was. They can then start to build up again. The approach of the Minister and the Department of Finance arises from a culture where the banks could do no wrong and, therefore, little or nothing in terms of conditionality could be imposed on them. If we are to be rescued from our current position, that culture must change.

On Committee Stage, the Minister said he was not inclined to accept this amendment, although I asked him if he had a better way of framing it while adhering to its principle. Why should somebody get €54 billion, as will happen between that group of banks that are entering this scheme, when, as every Member knows, the local GAA, soccer or tiddlywinks club that receives €100,000 is subject to information disclosure and publication, and rightly so? We take it for granted that the disbursement of public moneys is subject to public information. There is nothing wrong with that. If we learn the names of the various developers, the banking crisis will not worsen. It will simply enable us to come to terms with the situation.

In some ways a grief has invaded the country. People are asking where our prosperity went. A total of €66 billion was made from land rezoning in this country in a very short period of time. It is legitimate to ask who was involved and where the money went, and to give citizens that information. Perhaps it will become a tale people will tell their grandchildren. On the other hand, there are people who will start a business, as people often do in the depths of a recession, and, although this might be a negative role model, if they are in the development business it might encourage them to say: "I will not do that. I will build up my business and put capital into it. I will not be seduced by every bank that keeps upping the ante." This is an essential part of the recovery process for this country.

The Minister might have an alternative way of addressing this. I urge him not to hide behind the veil of the banker-client relationship having the seal of the confessional. Of course that is true with regard to one's daily dealings with the bank and the Revenue Commissioners, and nobody wishes to be prurient about those. However, that is different from the principle of disclosing. In the United States one can go on-line and discover every detail relating to the troubled asset recovery programme, what has happened in the programme, if and when assets have been seized, the Resolution Trust Corporation and so forth. The consequences of some of the information are not always pleasant but at least it makes citizens feel their government has some sense of what took place.

I suspect that, at present, some Government Ministers do not even know to whom this €54 billion relates. We know it is going to the banks, but the banks gave these loans to people in the development business. The bankers and developers behaved in an unbelievably greedy, reckless and mad way. They did not necessarily bring ruin on themselves, although some have, but they have certainly brought a great deal of ruin to a great many ordinary people in this country.

Let us consider the position of small businesses which are currently encountering difficulties in the context of renewing their overdrafts. When the owners of these concerns are obliged to put "Closed" signs in the front window of their premises, everyone in the towns and villages where those businesses are located will discover what is the story in the local pub. If we then consider the case of the so-called maple ten who took on the shares in Anglo Irish Bank when the members of the Quinn family, having spent €1.5 billion, ran out of money - which is understandable - and could not meet the calls being made on them, then it is obvious that information must be placed in the public domain.

Such information can already be placed in the public domain by journalists. What is wrong, however, with the Government publishing it? At present, at least five investigations are ongoing into the activities of Anglo Irish Bank. It is some 12 months after the difficulties with that institution emerged and we are as wise now as we were then with regard to its activities. When public concern was at its height approximately seven or eight months ago, the Garda raided the offices of Anglo Irish Bank. Since then, there has been nothing but silence. One would think that those making the inquiries had joined the Carmelites and taken a vow of silence. That is not the way to engender a sense of justice, fairness or balance or to allow people to come to terms with their rage and grief regarding the fact that the economy has been ruined and they must start again.

I commend the amendment to the House.

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