Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Could I quickly take the opportunity to articulate my deepest sympathies and those of the Fianna Fáil Party at the appalling mass murder in the Pulse nightclub in Orlando last Saturday night? Our thoughts and prayers are with all those who have been bereaved and with the victims. It was an assault on the entire LGBT community in the US and globally. It represented a fundamental attack on the essence of our liberal, free democratic society and the immense destruction that can be wreaked by access to weaponry, which wreaked such havoc among young people enjoying a normal Saturday night out. May they rest in peace.

On Leaders' Questions proper, I want to put it to the Taoiseach - I raised this issue during the last Dáil - that as revelations emerge and as the level of the investigations get deeper, the Government's position on Project Eagle, the sale of Project Eagle by NAMA, becomes more untenable by the day, that is, the sense that there is nothing to investigate down here or that there is no necessity for the Government of the Irish Republic to be overly concerned about this particular deal. I do not believe that position is credible. The sales process, whether we like it or not or whether Nama likes it or not, was not robust, was not competitive and did not secure the best outcome. There are huge ethical questions over the entire sale of that asset. As we know, there was €7 million in an offshore account. We know there are allegations of fixers' fees. We know that PIMCO went to NAMA and said that third parties were looking for fees. At that stage NAMA said it forced PIMCO to withdraw but PIMCO said it voluntarily withdrew. However, that does not matter, the point is that Cerberus came in and used the same third parties or legal structures and we ended up with the sale at a very steep discount. We are talking about assets with a book value of more than €5 billion. NAMA purchased them for €2 billion and they were sold at a €400 million loss on NAMA's purchase price but the bottom line is that it is the Irish taxpayer has lost out substantially as a result of this particular deal.

The UK's National Crime Agency is investigating this. There have been two arrests and there are rumours of more arrests on the way. It is being investigated in the United States. The Northern Ireland finance committee has had an inquiry. At the very least, NAMA should have attended that inquiry. It is the biggest sale since the agency was established and there are huge concerns about it. Yet we, in the Republic, seem to have adopted an attitude that there is nothing to see here, that everything is fine on this side of the equation.

I put it to the Taoiseach that at the time that PIMCO revealed that people were seeking fees, surely that was the time for the entire deal to be called off, for both NAMA and the Minister for Finance, who was alerted to it, to call a halt to that deal and say there were too many questions about it. It was something from which they should have pulled back. The Irish taxpayer lost out to an extraordinary degree but worst than that, the deal is tainted, of that there can be no question.

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