Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

I can only conclude that the Minister is being deliberately oblique in his reply. There is a very significant difference between where a physical asset or land bank is located and where the company or the entity that owns that land bank may be located for tax and administrative purposes. One of the reasons President Obama, following his election, was so intent on the point is that in the United States there is a long-established practice covering those who do business in the United States. Many US citizens and corporations consciously put their business offshore because the reach of the internal revenue in the United States is very wide.

I do not want to hear about ski chalets in parts of Switzerland being owned by developers as this is not relevant. What is relevant are the entities involved in these banks, the subsidiaries of these banks. The application must be to the Minister as stated in these sections and not to NAMA. I presume applications will be processed by NAMA but the Minister is the decision-maker in these sections. Unless the Minister is not as well-informed as I would have thought, I am sure he is very aware that many European banks and Irish banks have subsidiary activities in Switzerland as that country is in many ways the home of modern banking. It would be quite unusual, particularly for the foreign owners of Irish banks, not to have some of their company activities and subsidiaries located in Switzerland.

See this speech in context