Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak to the motion. I support my colleague Deputy Michael McGrath on the amendment we are tabling.

Let us stand back and consider the global picture. NAMA's sale of loans with a face value of €5.4 billion, linked with the Northern Ireland borrowers in April 2014, was the biggest sale since the agency was established in 2009. That is one of the reasons I want to examine this issue. It was known as Project Eagle. NAMA had paid €2 billion originally for the loans from the various banks and, by the time they were sold, they had an impairment charge which resulted in a price of €1.6 billion being received by NAMA and ultimately the Irish taxpayer. The US capital management company bought the portfolio of loans, secured on 850 properties in Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland and England. They were not all located in Northern Ireland. It is important that people fully appreciate this. The loans were based on the connection with 55 Northern Ireland-based borrowers and all put together based on the borrowers’ connections. The portfolio included properties outside the Six Counties.

When I consider the sum of €5.4 billion, I note there was already a discount of 63% on the loan book to be taken over by NAMA. That was a phenomenal discount, far bigger than that available across other banks and categories of borrowers who had their loans transferred to NAMA. By the time the loan book was ultimately sold for €1.6 billion, it represented a loss on the original value of €3.8 billion, it being a loss to the Irish taxpayer who secured only 30% of the loan book value, an incredibly small amount. One of the reasons for that is that NAMA has a habit of dealing with borrowers rather than based on the locations of their properties or the individual banks from which the loans were advanced. We will ask NAMA in due course to spell out the breakdown of the loans and the amounts received for the particular banks that provided the loans in the first place, in respect of which the Irish taxpayer must meet the shortfall.

I was recently appointed Chairman of the Committee of Public Accounts. In the autumn we will be dealing with the fact that there was ultimately just one real substantial bidder left at the end of the process. One must ask whether it was right to proceed with only one substantial bidder. Should someone have called a halt to the sale at that stage? That is a big issue. Many people have other issues concerning the money available from the purchasers’ side. NAMA is adamant there is nothing criminally wrong on its side of the sale. There are, however, two sides to this equation and we must distinguish between them.

The Controller and Auditor General is producing a special report - a value for money report – which will be going to the Minister in the next month or so. He will be entitled to sit on that report for three months, but I ask him to ensure it will be made available before the Dáil reconvenes in September in order that we can deal with this issue immediately. I do not want it to be held over until October, the week of the budget, at which time it will be lost. We must be very careful. The Minister has the authority to issue the report the day after NAMA presents it to him. I do not want him to take the full 90 days he is statutorily allowed to take. He has said NAMA has ultimately become an asset for the State, but it is clear that everything connected with it in the Six Counties ended up comprising a major liability to the Irish taxpayer. We must ask ourselves why the entire Northern Ireland loan book was sold in one lot and why it became the sole major liability of the NAMA project, given that the Minister has acknowledged that the agency is expected to return a surplus and, ultimately, be a major asset for the State.

As Chairman of the Committee of Public Accounts, I look forward to receiving the report. We will conduct a very thorough examination of the NAMA project and Project Eagle and all of the questions being asked in the Chamber will be asked in public at meetings of the committee. If we have to consult colleagues in the Northern Ireland Assembly to work collectively, I will be open to this. Whether the questions are being put in the North or here, all of the answers must be provided in some democratic forum.

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