Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)

I commend the amendment to the House. I thank Deputies on all sides of the House for their contributions in this debate.

The nub of the Opposition's motion and the contributions of all Deputies is how to get access to credit and finance. It is clear that the Government's actions in addressing the financial crisis within the banking sector are fundamental to providing a capacity for banks to support our enterprise sector, including SMEs. As part of the recapitalisation process, banks have begun to retrain their staff in the basic skills of lending, as a number of Deputies have mentioned this evening, and this process should be accelerated.

The purpose of NAMA is to remove uncertainty about the banks' balance sheets, clean them up and provide them with an ability to access liquidity, thereby facilitating the availability of credit to the real economy. To date, NAMA has removed €27 billion of risky assets from the balance sheets of the participating institutions, with €13 billion in NAMA bonds being issued in return. These bonds are a direct source of liquidity for the participating institutions as they are market tradeable in addition to being eligible as collateral for eurosystem operations. It is from this source that credit should now be available.

Banks are committed to meeting their lending target for new lending of €12 billion through 2010 and 2011 and are confirming that they are open for business. Today's annual conference of the Irish Banking Federation, IBF, placed considerable emphasis on the banks' willingness to lend and to engage with their stakeholders-----

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