Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

I thank the Minister of State for his reply. It is intriguing that someone who was one of the architects of social partnership and would have great expertise in social partnership participation in various public boards would have made this proposal. From the material I have read about FÁS, one of its downfalls is that matters were shoved into sub-committees and because its executive was so powerful the kind of general scrutiny and oversight which was appropriate did not happen. Like many other people, in the past year and a half I have read about, met, seen and heard speak people who are on the boards of the various banks. I have scratched my head regarding some of them and have wondered what on God's earth were these people doing on the boards of the banks and why did they not shout "Stop".

The same is true of State boards such as that of FÁS. These are often people of significant reputation and experience, many of whom are professionally qualified. However, because information was shunted off somewhere else they were along for the ride, an approach which resulted in some of the disasters we have experienced.

At the commencement of Committee Stage, NAMA had a special purpose vehicle suddenly added with a week's notice. The financial structure of NAMA and the span of control, which is important from the perspective of it being a banking-type institution, is no longer what it was. We now have NAMA and the special purpose vehicle, which is the authorised decision maker; it is the holder of the loans and issuer of the €54 billion or so in bonds.

We know officers of NAMA are to be on the special purpose vehicle but the authority and control over big financial decisions is now located in the special purpose vehicle. We are now also having a finance committee which is to be a small and powerful sub-committee. The audit committee is standard for corporate governance and there are also the credit and risk management committees, which are essential in banking-type institutions. Now that we have the SPV of NAMA in control, we need to know a little more about this.

I would like to know more about Senator O'Toole's thinking and the Minister's ready agreement with the Senator on the hiving off of core critical information. We will talk about qualifications for dealing with NAMA later as they are in a later section. This is to be hived off entirely into sub-committees as there will be four such sub-committees by law. These committees will carry powers.

In a company one can set up as many sub-committees as one likes and, for example, a chief executive may put something new into a sub-committee. What is being reported as Senator O'Toole's view is that it may be better if some of this stuff could be discussed beforehand. In the context of the job that NAMA does, I would worry about this. I would like all those board members to be very seized of what it is that NAMA is proposing to do in monetary terms. We are talking about €54 billion in taxpayers' money and liability. The loans are, for the most part, damaged, distressed and limping loans and yet we are to divert all these issues to some cosy committee.

Much is riding on the officials in NAMA being sea-green incorruptibles. Given the history of the NTMA, I am hopeful about that but hiving this off to a sub-committee, which can deliver a one or two-page conclusion, could lead to difficulty. Somebody who was a member of a State board in the time of Charlie Haughey wrote to me recently. I think the person may have been friendly with Mr. Haughey and leading politicians of other parties at the time. That person was on the boards of an important national institution but because the person asked questions, he became persona non grata and a pain to the head of the board. That person very quickly became isolated for asking reasonable questions as a board member.

I would like to hear an absolute undertaking from the Minister that the full NAMA board will deal with the financial decisions to be made, bearing in mind that the SPV and span of control introduced very late in the day by the Minister has changed the architecture of NAMA significantly. I can foresee a position where the SPV would be the controlling decision maker but there would be a finance committee and general board as well. The interaction may be between the SPV and the finance committee and the issues could get to the board very late in the day.

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