Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

I too have been reading the report from the Government dealing with the problems mortgage holders are having in repaying their loans. The report includes 41 recommendations. There will be a lot of letters written back and forth between lenders and borrowers but the only firm recommendation I can see is that the one-year moratorium on legal action by lenders cannot be extended. That stands in stark contrast to what we are learning now about the real situation in NAMA.

Yesterday there were two newspaper articles, one in The Irish Times and the other in the Irish Independent, both of which seem to be based on fairly well informed briefings, both stating that what we were told in the original business plan for NAMA turns out not to be the case at all. The original plan told us that 40% of the loans that would be transferred to NAMA would be performing loans which would be cash flow generating. It turns out, if the newspaper reports are accurate, that this applies not to 40% but to 25% of loans and that, as a consequence, the projections made for NAMA will not now be fulfilled. The Minister for Finance came into the House when he was proposing the NAMA legislation and told us all that NAMA would not only wash its face but would make a profit of €4.8 billion. If these reports are accurate, there could instead turn out to be a loss of several hundred millions of euro.

Is it true that only 25%, not 40%, of loans are performing based on the case-by-case analysis that has been done by NAMA? If that is true, can the Taoiseach explain to us why the original business plan for NAMA that was presented to the House has turned out be a bit of a financial fairy tale? Will the Taoiseach confirm that when the Minister for Finance came before us and asked us to approve NAMA, that he did so on the basis of projections which now turn out not to be accurate? If it is the case that they are not accurate, can the Taoiseach inform us why this is the case? Is it because the banks lied in providing the original information on which the 40% estimate was made?

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