Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy should bear with me now. The point is that we made a decision collectively, for good or for bad, as a Parliament. I think it was for the good - I supported the late Mr. Brian Lenihan in his position - that politicians should be removed from the process. Otherwise, every little developer and every big developer in the country could be involved. I was a member of the old Dublin County Council where the developers used to pull my sleeve as I was walking along saying, "Joan, would you like to come to breakfast, dinner or tea and could you have a look at a bit of land that I have a proposition on". When we had the debate on NAMA, we wanted to take that out of the picture.

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