Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

No. The letter I received, a copy of which I will give to the Minister of State and which I will read into the record, was only an ordinary letter about a commoner garden bit of tax avoidance. It only involved tax avoidance on a deal worth about €500 million and tax avoidance of approximately €48 million. In the whole scheme of things it was not that much. This kind of arrangement was core to why we lost the run of ourselves and why this Government ended up admiring Anglo Irish Bank.

Mr. Justice Peter Kelly talked yesterday about Zoe Developments and arrangements for a €500 million loan all secured on undertakings. The Minister of State present has a legal background. The son of a very prominent developer who has fallen on hard times wrote in The Sunday Tribune at the weekend about how personal guarantees were what banks came to rely on towards the end even though they were meaningless.

A developer in my constituency told me he is only liable to NAMA for approximately €75 million and therefore he is okay. Those are not the kind of figures in which I would deal but he seemed to be able to take it on the chin. The banks were contacting him by telephone to ramp up what he would bid and seek. Unless that area is included in this inquiry, we will simply encourage the bankers to go off as soon as this is over and repeat exactly what they have done to the economy. Perhaps they will be waiting for Fianna Fáil after it is ten years out of office to return to office and let them start all over again.

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