Áine Collins (Cork North West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the motion this evening. As we all know, NAMA was set up under the NAMA Act 2009, which was an answer at the time to the failed boom and bust economics delivered by the previous Government. It was set up to take loans in Irish banks under much stress. We were all aware of that and we are still dealing with those effects. NAMA paid €32 billion for €74 billion in loans, with the object being to sell the loans and get a return to the State over ten years. The legislation laid down very strict codes of practice for how NAMA would behave and to whom it would answer. At the time, the agency only answered to the Minister for Finance, but as Deputy Anthony Lawlor mentioned, it is now a little more transparent, although not as much as we would like. We appreciate the sensitivity and complexity of the information it handles because of commercial reasons. The agency responds to the Committee of Public Accounts, and the Chairman of the committee is sitting opposite this evening. Representatives of NAMA were in recently to answer questions about various projects mentioned across the House. Deputy Wallace did not attend the meeting, although he was invited to participate.

From what NAMA has stated about Project Eagle, there was an open bidding process and all the data was available in a data room. Anybody interested in bidding was given access to the data room. There was a granular format and Lazard, a very well-known loan sale adviser, advised NAMA on the sale. Based on the evidence given on the day and some information I read in the public domain, it seems that there have been issues around various "fixers" - I use the term lightly because it is not a term with which I am familiar - and people being paid different sums of money, although that is outside the NAMA remit. NAMA's job was to sell different portfolios of assets, package them and sell them for the best price available on the market before returning the money to the State. In doing so, the agency sometimes packaged assets and portfolios of assets so it would not sell all the good options and leave the weak options behind.

There is evidence that the Project Eagle sale was only 25% of the market value. We cannot look at this on an average value because some of the portfolio was at 50% of market value and some was as low as 5%. We all know Cerberus went on to sell it to the original developer; under NAMA legislation, it was not allowed to sell a portfolio of assets to the original holder of the loan. Cerberus operates outside that legislation and can do as it wishes in selling the assets. I was very happy that representatives of NAMA came before the Committee of Public Accounts. The Chairman is sitting opposite and I am sure he will speak on this later. Those witnesses were very open and gave a very detailed description of how this was put up for sale, how people made bids, various due diligence and a final bid. It was valued by Lazard at the time at €1.24 billion and it was sold for €1.241 billion, which is what the market suggested as its worth.

I fail to see why we would go any further in setting up a commission of investigation when the Comptroller and Auditor General has stated that the sales were openly marketed. For its third special report on NAMA, published in May 2014, the Comptroller and Auditor General examined 144 individual transactions, with gross proceeds of €1.1 billion, finding evidence of open marketing in all but 26 of the 144 sales, with fully explained reasons for the other 26 cases. Some of them were sold back to the State or state bodies in Great Britain.

I am more concerned that when the NAMA representatives were before the Committee of Public Accounts a couple of weeks ago, they stated that the agency asked various local authorities in Dublin to buy back some houses in order to provide social housing. They offered 2,500 of these to various local authorities and only approximately 800 were taken up. There is a job to be done in investigating why some of the houses that NAMA wanted to give to local authorities in various parts of Ireland have not been taken up. Part of the remit of local authorities is to ensure they can provide adequate social housing. I know we are all very concerned about this, and we have been for a number of years. The issue came about because at a time when we needed 25,000 houses per year, we built 90,000 houses per year, and now we still need 25,000 houses per year but we have only been building 7,000 per year for the past number of years. We must examine the issue.

In County Cork alone, there are 130 ghost estates. They are not all owned by NAMA, as some are owned by various receivers, etc. We should consider why councils are not looking to buy these ghost estates, fitting them out and trying to house people when we know there is such a great need. I appreciate there is a greater need in Dublin and other urban areas but if we cannot provide for those immediately, perhaps we should look at reassigning people who might be interested in moving from urban areas to more rural areas. As somebody who lives in rural Ireland, I can vouch that it is a very nice way to live; it is not "beyond the Pale", so to speak. There are options that should be examined and I call on NAMA to make some housing available. The local authorities should certainly look to work with the agency to the greater benefit of all of us. Local authorities should look to finish ghost estates as quickly as possible, as it would benefit all of our communities.

8 o’clock

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this motion but I do not agree with it. We should not be looking at an investigation into Project Eagle. Resources are available to people who have issues and they should be looked at first. There is the Committee of Public Accounts. In addition, the Minister for Finance has made his Department available for any questions from the Northern Ireland advisory committee and the Department has sent it a great deal of information.

See this speech in context