Clare Daly (Dublin North, United Left) | Oireachtas source

I also believe it is appropriate and welcome that Deputy Wallace mentioned the issue of NAMA. It is as if we are in the middle of a production of "Hamlet" when the boys are outside talking about their being something very rotten in the state of Denmark. We all know what happened at the end play - there was no more Hamlet and the dynasty he stood over dissolved as well. I honestly believe we on the cusp of something similar here. Deputy Mulherin was correct in saying that NAMA has made an absolute hames out of its obligations in terms of the supposed goal that it would play a role in assisting in providing housing and so on. That is only one side of the equation because, ultimately, it is this Government and other Government policies that have contributed to this situation.

The Dublin City Council housing manager had to take to the media outlets to highlight the fact that his budget for this city will be €18 million short to deal with the homeless crisis. Even today three people contacted my office. These are people living in hotels or hostels with serious mental health and physical health problems. People are being told to source accommodation themselves. If they find hotel or hostel which will take them, they are told to telephone a number and that the person at the end of that line will activate a credit card to pay for that accommodation. When people do that, they do not get an answer to the number they telephone to activate the credit card and then the hotel accommodation is often gone. The idea that we are expending millions of euro on this type of accommodation for families is appalling. It is appalling wrong way round economics when we have so many units supposedly in the ownership of the State in NAMA.

Instead NAMA is being used to off-load large quantities of property in big chunks which, as Deputy Wallace and others have said, has resulted in a distortion of the rental market, contributing on that side to other housing pressures. A number of residents in my area have sought to approach NAMA as a co-operative of residents. They would be middle income earners who would be refused large mortgages for the types of prices being charged for properties but if they collectively approached NAMA for some of the units, the Sate would get more money than it is getting from some of these big vulture funds and people would be accommodated. These are extremely important issues. We are talking about billions of euros of taxpayers money potentially being wasted, ending up in the private gain of individuals.

The idea that the Government would say it is okay, there is a very transparent process there, we have a Comptroller and Auditor General and that this body is open to scrutiny is laughable because it was not open to scrutiny when those in government were on the Opposition benches. The amount of information that is now in the public domain makes it abundantly clear that given the huge interest this project is to the Irish taxpayer, and in terms of our housing strategy as we move forward, nothing short of an independent investigation is needed, involving external forensic accountants and financial people who can track down the money and find out what is going on. Something of a side show has been conducted over the past few days.

I mean no disrespect to any politician but the idea that the Committee of Public Accounts would have the wherewithal to carry out this function is laughable. I wonder if this idea is being pushed as a sort of side show to divert attention from what is actually necessary, which is a real inquiry. This issue is far too important for people to try to grab a cheap headline or get themselves heard at a committee. I am sorry, but that expertise does not exist. We need something bigger. We need someone from outside our society to come in and analyse this. Given the huge property portfolios, American interests and so on, whose attention is now on this issue, that will happen sooner rather than later, but it would be far better that it would operate in the short term.

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