Dáil debates

Wednesday, 21 October 2015

National Asset Management Agency: Motion (Resumed) [Private Members]

 

7:15 pm

Photo of John McGuinnessJohn McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I wish to share time with Deputies Calleary and Kelleher.

In response to Deputy Buttimer, I do not determine the style of the Committee of Public Accounts. The members of that committee work diligently and to their own style. They raise their own set of questions and they have worked well together as a team with the Comptroller and Auditor General. In this case, I have complete confidence in the Comptroller and Auditor General and in the members to question NAMA and get the necessary details to fill in the gaps of information that exist in the public domain regarding the sale of Project Eagle. As I stated in this House previously - and I have spoken directly to Deputy Wallace - it would be helpful if he came forward and gave evidence to the committee so that all of what he has said here can then be investigated at the Committee of Public Accounts and, indeed, can be helpful to the Comptroller and Auditor General as he sets about creating a special report into NAMA and particularly Project Eagle.

What concerns me about the work of the Committee of Public Accounts is that this issue involves another jurisdiction, and maybe the investigation being suggested tonight would lead us to a better understanding and better co-operation because of the fact that there are two different jurisdictions. It is complicated, too, by the fact that NAMA, for some reason, has decided not to send representatives to attend the hearings in Northern Ireland. That is regrettable. It has been stated directly to NAMA by some members of the Committee of Public Accounts that it should attend. There are questions to be answered and there is information it has that might be useful in co-operating with the inquiry in Northern Ireland.

Let us look at the sale of Project Eagle. Sixty-eight percent of that property was in Northern Ireland, 18% in southern Ireland, 12% in Great Britain and 2% elsewhere. Our interest is in what the taxpayer has received at the end of all of this, and some of the information that Members have put on the public record this evening is simply incorrect. The par value of those loans - that is, what the borrowers owed NAMA at one time - was €5.7 billion. NAMA paid the banks €2.2 billion, and the remaining €3.5 billion, 61% of the par value, was the discount on the price paid by NAMA. When they went on through the process and sold the assets, the loss in general, as NAMA reported to the Committee of Public Accounts, was somewhere in the region of €200 million to €250 million. In fact, the Comptroller and Auditor General has stated that the loss on the sale, even after all the haircuts on the way down to the final sale, was €783 million.

I have said to NAMA that one of its biggest problems is the arrogance that it displays when answering any question, and the fact that it appears to deliberately delay answering some of the questions until a particular date is past, at which time the answer is of no value to anyone because the horse has bolted. That is the problem with NAMA. In this particular case, the same thing happened.

One of the questions that was raised was about the sale of the property. I hold that NAMA should not have gone ahead with the sale of the property. Once PIMCO gave it the information that questions had been raised, with NAMA's understanding of Northern Ireland politics and what was going on, it should have withdrawn from the process.

There are issues such as the memorandum of understanding, whereby the personal guarantees were to be written off and forgotten about, and that was being suggested from the Northern Ireland Assembly offices. Why was that going on? Why was there such interference that someone would feel confident enough within the political system of Northern Ireland to say to the Minister for Finance, Deputy Noonan, that that was what should happen - freeing all those who had the loans of personal guarantees? We all would like that.

Earlier it was stated here that the property market in the North was more or less on the floor and was not going anywhere. At a meeting of the Northern Ireland advisory committee held on 7 October 2013, which was attended by the chairman and other representatives from NAMA, NAMA was told that, as with Dublin, there was a demand for, and shortage of, grade A office space in Belfast city and the shortage presented a corollary need for landlords to refurbish existing stock. It was also told that rent and yield forecasts across the commercial property sector were predominantly stabilising or strengthening. That is what NAMA was told before the sale of Project Eagle. That, alongside the fixer's fee and how this money ended up in another account, was notified to them, and there were questions about NAMA's representative in Northern Ireland, Frank Cushnahan. At that stage, when all of these questions were being asked, and when it was dealing with a difficult market, politically and otherwise, NAMA should have withdrawn.

We have a situation in which accusations and allegations are being made in Northern Ireland, but the problem is that we do not have access to that. We have the Deputy First Minister, Martin McGuinness MLA, asking to attend the Committee of Public Accounts because he wants to clarify some issues that were raised by the Minister for Finance about his activities. There is a need for a single overarching body to investigate thoroughly what happened in this regard.

With regard to Project Jewel, the questions that have been raised about that particular property portfolio, dating back to a contract entered into by the local authority in Dublin in 2004, have not been answered. In fact, some of the councillors will tell you that they know nothing about this contract. If Members have any pride in our history, which they talk about in this House, and if the Members, including the Taoiseach, who have gone to visit that site in Moore Lane and Moore Street understand the case being made by the representatives of the families of those who fought in 1916, they would ensure that the site in its entirety, as a battlefield, was protected. When we were visiting that site only yesterday, the number of people on guided tours was impressive, despite the fact that the area has not much to offer except dated plaques on walls. The history they are hearing about, and in which they are interested, is turning into euros for the economy. Therefore, in terms of its future development, there is an absolute need for that sale to be halted until such time as clarification is received for those who have asked questions in relation to the submission made at the last PAC meeting, which I gave to NAMA and which it has not yet answered. These are simple questions. Does NAMA agree with the National Museum's analysis of that battlefield? Did NAMA itself have the site assessed? What has been the expenditure to date in terms of the planning application by Chartered Land on the historic site? Has the ownership of the national monument at Nos. 14 to 17 Moore Street been transferred to the State? I understand that it has, but then there are the 1916 buildings that have been identified, and that are part of the development, which now need to be saved. Lastly, there is the question of the €5 million set aside by NAMA for that site and how it was to be spent. What is the status of that? When those simple questions are asked and when representatives of a project such as Project Jewel make a legitimate attempt to engage with NAMA and get nowhere, that is what causes suspicion. It is that inaction that causes them to ask the questions that are being asked.

The same is being applied in a much more commercial way to this property portfolio in Northern Ireland, and it is not good enough that we would just debate it here, sign it off and state that it is merely something that the Opposition is doing.

It is not. These questions are being asked of all of us in the House and there is a concern and a suspicion that must be dealt with. There are questions in the public domain that deserve to be answered and if this debate does anything, it should draw attention to Project Jewel and Project Eagle. The Minister should intervene immediately, stop what is happening with Project Jewel and ensure the appropriate forum is put in place so all the questions being asked can be answered and dealt with comprehensively.

Comments

No comments

Log in or join to post a public comment.