Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

It is important to recognise that the recapitalisation of the banks was an absolute necessity to get credit flowing and return them to their core business of lending to the real economy. This involved cleaning up their balance sheets and providing an outlet to NAMA. I reject the Deputy's suggestion on the motivation for NAMA and consider it an awful slur against the integrity of those who run the agency, including its chairman, the former chairman of the Office of the Revenue Commissioners. The very good outline of NAMA's progress that the chairman gave in a speech he made last week gives the lie to the sort of politically motivated attack which the Deputy repeated. He was inaccurate then and is inaccurate now.

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