Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Ceann Comhairle. I would like 50 minutes but I will not get them. I will address several of the points which have been raised. Government speakers have stated that just because something had a par value of £4.5 billion and it ended up being sold for £1.241 billion, it does not mean it was sold for more than £3 billion too little, but the fact is that when NAMA was set up the argument was made at the time that the reason for doing so was so we would not firesale assets but wait for the market to recover and get value. Sadly, this rule was not kept. Property does have a value. It is worth what it cost to build, even if the land does not cost anything. If property is sold for less than it cost to build, in my opinion it is being sold for less than its value.

The point has been made that the parcels of land were so big that only a handful of companies on the planet could have bought these big portfolios. It was impossible for Irish business people to buy into this property area. When NAMA was set up, it was one of the biggest property companies on the planet. What has happened is that we have actually sold this property mostly to US vulture funds. We have sold a huge chunk of Ireland away to people who only care about the bottom line, which is profit. The Government seems to be content with the idea of Kennedy Wilson controlling the rental market in Dublin. I do not think this is such a good idea. If what we had before lacked regulation, this was something which should have been addressed, but we had landlords who owned two, five or ten houses and they will be wiped because of how things have gone. An apartment in Dominic Street has gone from €900 a month to €1,500 a month in the space of three years because a small group of players such as Kennedy Wilson has a major stranglehold on the rental market.

A number of Deputies have said no allegations have been made against NAMA itself. I am sorry, but I beg to differ. At present, 15 different investigations are being carried out by An Garda Síochána into the workings of NAMA, and this is just the reported stuff. Trust me, there is more coming down the tracks in terms of complaints about how NAMA has done its business. People have said enough investigations are going on, but it just so happens the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission in the United States are only interested in US companies. This is their remit under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. They can only look at the four US companies involved, namely, Brown Rudnick, Cerberus, PIMCO and Fortress. The National Crime Agency in Britain is looking at the Northern Ireland angle. In actual fact, we are still not getting any proper independent investigation into the workings of NAMA. If we go back through the answers the Committee of Public Accounts was given by NAMA, when Deputy Mary Lou McDonald asked about the conflict of interest of Frank Cushnahan and the Project Eagle sale, she was told it was commercially sensitive and that another issue was personally sensitive. This is understandable and NAMA is within its rights to do this, but only a commission of inquiry will get the unredacted version, and only this way will we get to the truth of what is happening.

I argue that the process of the sale of Project Eagle was not competitive. Fortress bid less than £1.1 billion and the reserve was £1.24 billion. There was something amiss. Cerberus was the only live bidder left on the job. We probably have not heard the last of Fortress and there are problems with it.

As Deputy Michael McGrath said, there is a cloud over the workings of NAMA and it will remain there until there is an independent commission of inquiry of some nature. If the Government does not do it, we will probably get it after the election, but we will get one eventually and the sooner the better. Project Arrow should be frozen. It would be criminal if NAMA goes ahead and sells to a company under criminal investigation.

See this speech in context