Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I am sharing my time with Deputy Mick Barry. I will try to behave like a gentleman on a very ungentlemanly subject. I welcome the Bill proposed by Independents4Change. Deputy Mick Wallace is doing the State and the people a great service by highlighting this scandal. Much has been said about his Bill.

First, I wish to comment on the Government's amendment, which is utterly outrageous. Clearly, the Minister, Deputy Michael Noonan, was to see no evil and hear no evil. He simply wants to park it all and put it to one side. Best of all is the Fianna Fáil amendment, which is all about suspending and putting back any idea that we can do anything in this House. This is exactly how that party has acted in the case of issues relating to water and bin charges as well as the campaign to repeal the eighth amendment, with its proposed committee. It is acting in the same way with the Equal Status (Admission to Schools) Bill. The Fianna Fáil amendment on the NAMA issue is all about suspension, putting it back and not dealing with it. It is outrageous.

I will make a wider argument about why this is not simply about Project Eagle but the entire raison d'êtreof NAMA. NAMA's actions are far from the things stated in its brief, that is to say, to facilitate credit and protect the interests of taxpayers and contribute to the social and economic development of the State. In fact, it has done much of the opposite. It has facilitated the vulture funds that have bought up tranches of property in the country for a song, sometimes in corrupt circumstances. It has facilitated giant global property equity fears and the development of real estate investment trusts, entities involved in not paying tax and buying up vast tranches of property at a song. Therefore, NAMA is protecting certain developers and bankers. NAMA has done nothing under its remit to contribute to a social role. It has done nothing other than contribute to the deepening housing crisis.

The scale of the housing crisis, with 140,000 citizens in need of a house and on waiting lists, has been worsened by the actions of NAMA instead of contributing to mitigating it. NAMA is funding developers. The developers NAMA has helped are now concentrating on building luxury homes with the help of NAMA funds in places like Howth hill, where no ordinary person could ever dream of affording a property. NAMA has made funding available from bankrupt developers at the higher end of the market. NAMA might point to the Trojan work it has done in supplying social housing for availability to local authorities. Having been on a local authority for seven years, however, it is clear to me that in reality much of what was offered was totally unsuitable for social housing. This helps to explain the low take-up of same. Now, in the Dublin docklands, NAMA is facilitating a building boom in office space and the continued gentrification of prime areas, even as the State lumbers through the greatest housing crisis and emergency in its history.

While NAMA claims that all sales are done in the open market through competitive bidding, this motion shows that there is something rotten in the State of Denmark, as Shakespeare might have said. There is an incestuous relationship between the firms and many of those involved in the hedge funds and vulture funds. Far from tax avoidance being an unseen outcome, it is explicit in the attempts of the Minister, Deputy Michael Noonan, to put this to one side.

I put forward a bill to change the NAMA remit to include a social housing role but it was ruled out of order by the House. I am seeking an explanation for that, but that Bill would have ensured NAMA played a clear role in the provision of social housing rather than providing for these developers.

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