Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)

On Deputy Doherty's question, based on this morning's statement by the NAMA chairman, Mr. Frank Daly, my understanding is that the money about which he was talking is to be spent in Ireland. The Deputy will be familiar with the types of projects already. For example NAMA invested in refitting the cinemas in The Square in Tallaght. They are now open and employing 80 people. Previously it was a piece of dereliction in The Square in Tallaght. It invested approximately €15 million into finishing a partially constructed shopping centre somewhere on the north side of Dublin - I do not have the centre's exact name. There is sufficient interest for all the units to be let. When those units are let, 280 people will be employed there.

IDA Ireland believes that modern computer-friendly office blocks are the advance factories of this generation and that we will not be able to drive our inward investment programme without them. It indicates that there is a shortage of them in Dublin and that by 2015 such a shortage will inhibit IDA Ireland's work. NAMA is in negotiations with a particular developer on the quayside adjacent to the Irish Financial Services Centre to build one of those office blocks.

Houses near the golf club in Dún Laoghaire have been completed with NAMA money and have been put on the market. As nearly all of them have been sold, permission has been given for more of them, which NAMA is also financing. Its mandate is to take over the impaired loans of banks and use the property portfolio in the best interests of the taxpayer. It can maintain, upgrade or dispose of assets. The bottom line is that it is acting not in the interest of developers or banks but in the interest of the taxpayer so that we get something back for the money that was used.

NAMA frequently gets knocked, but it must be remembered that it has many enemies. Many developers do not like what NAMA is doing. Some developers have converted resources to their own and to their families' benefit and NAMA is going after them. Other people are coming in with money and want to get a bargain without paying a decent price and they get offended when they cannot do a deal. NAMA is working in the interest of the taxpayer as it is required to do under law and I am not supposed to interfere with it. I can advise it on the general policy, but it is making the commercial decisions and so far I believe it is doing a reasonable job.

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