Joe Costello (Dublin Central, Labour)

I am pleased to have the opportunity to raise this important matter. NAMA was established in May 2009 with the remit of transferring the loans on key developments and assets from the books of State-guaranteed banks in return for Government-guaranteed securities. To date, it has accumulated €40 billion of loans on its books and, as such, has an obligation to the State to realise the maximum value on its sites. While NAMA is not the titleholder, landowner or developer of the assets acquired, the assets are strongly influenced by NAMA. This was witnessed in Dublin Central where we saw what happened to the Lighthouse Cinema on foot of upward-only rent reviews and the insistence by NAMA that the developers should extract the maximum possible commercial rent. That resulted in a rent increasing from €100,000 to €200,000 and eventually to €500,000, which is quite extraordinary in these recessionary times.

What is worse is that NAMA is operating under a veil of secrecy; it is a secret organisation. There is no asset map of NAMA property and NAMA has stated that it does not intend to produce one. NAMA considers itself to be subject to the same client-bank clauses of confidentiality.

However, NAMA is much more than a bank or asset management agency. It controls property with a value of almost one third of national GDP. Whatever NAMA does with that property will impact hugely on the future development of our economy and will play a major role in its recovery or otherwise. Nevertheless, NAMA's actions are shrouded in secrecy. There is speculation about which lands and developers are in the control of NAMA but there is no definitive way of confirming its assets. The public cannot get a proper picture of what the position is at a given time.

Once a loan is acquired by NAMA the developer is obliged to submit a business plan within 30 days. NAMA considers the plan, approves it and manages how it is to be implemented. A business plan includes all of the developer's assets but is not necessarily subject to a development-by-development approach. Again, the business plans and proposals are not subject to public scrutiny. Even the local authorities have no statutory right to have an input or to scrutinise these plans. Dublin City Council has been unable to meet the representatives of NAMA. Its requests have been refused on three separate occasions. There are no defined final dates or time limits imposed on business plan reviews. Again, there is no transparency in monitoring how NAMA does its work.

With such a vast land bank of assets throughout the country NAMAhas the potential to plan strategically on a national basis and could play a major role in creating conditions for economic recovery. Through strategic planning NAMA could maximise the potential of planned or existing infrastructure and thereby enhance the potential of certain NAMA lands. While it is clear that it will take decades to emerge from the current economic crisis, NAMA appears to have no long-term strategic view. It is noteworthy that no planners are employed by the agency. Just as the boom was "developer-led", so too is the recession due to the developer-led approach of NAMA.

The programme for Government contains a commitment to ensuring that NAMA can yield a social or cultural dividend. Page 58 of the programme states: "We will seek to capture some public good from NAMA by identifying buildings that have no commercial potential, and which might be suitable as local facilities for art and culture". To date, NAMA has failed to state how this can or will be achieved, and the lack of transparency and accountability in NAMA makes it impossible to pursue the matter. The potential to realise a social, community or cultural dividend from NAMA is dependent on NAMA taking a long-term strategic view. Indeed, as long as the remit of NAMA remains the creation of the maximum return on assets at all costs, it is likely that substantial opportunities in the public interest could be overlooked or simply not prioritised.

The first essential step is a review of the freedom of information legislation to bring NAMA within its remit. The argument that NAMA's dealings are commercially sensitive is spurious. It should be possible to protect the more commercially sensitive information while at the same time ensuring that NAMA operates in a transparent, accountable manner, that it operates strategically in the national interest and that the public can see what NAMA is doing as the case arises.

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