Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

It is now four years and three months since I first raised, through a parliamentary question, the write-downs of IBRC to certain individuals. At that time, I noted the €100 million write-off and the €4.96 million pay-off to the shareholders. Obviously, the write-down was in respect of Siteserv. It was within days of the transaction. The Minister's reply at that time was pathetic and it still is. In the normal political establishment response to any issue of potential corruption in the State, the Minister retreated into the old rhetoric of the IBRC operating at arm's length and the board and bank are satisfied with the bid. Political responsibility was shirked from day one. Here we are, more than four years later, still trying to get the truth, despite the work of people such as Deputy Catherine Murphy, in terms of digging, making freedom of information requests and including issues we and others have raised about this case. If all of that sounds familiar it is because it is a process being repeated before our eyes with the refusal to inquire into the National Asset Management Agency, NAMA, through a commission of investigation. Like the IBRC, NAMA's sale of its Northern loan book requires a commission of investigation. Last October Fianna Fáil was all in favour of this. This month it was against it. I am not sure what its position is this week. We will wait and see.

My party rejected the first attempt at setting up this commission of investigation under its terms of reference because it was a half-hearted attempt made under political pressure. Last November, the interim report proved us right. The commission was never empowered to do the job people expected it to do. That was not a failure of Mr. Justice Cregan but it was a political failure.

IBRC was set up to manage the accumulated debts of two banks that were mangled together to create it, Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide Building Society. One more infamous than the other for the damage they did to Ireland and to its economy. The debt of these banks, which were the worst of the worst, was never wound down, even though the bank was. That debt remains on our books. The past and present of IBRC remains an issue for the Irish people. We have to cut our cloth where we are. Siteserv is the most critical issue of public interest. That is why we support the adoption of the modular approach and, in particular, the focus on Siteserv as an element of that module. I note too the inclusion of the principles and policies regarding the setting of interest rates. There is no reason to believe the suspicions regarding Denis O'Brien's affairs with IBRC are an isolated case.

The legislation was passed here last week and should be seen in conjunction with this motion. A key element of that was the new powers for the Minister to direct special liquidators. I wonder if another liquidator had been appointed would this have been necessary. The idea that the auditors of Irish Nationwide Building Society were the appropriate people to oversee the special liquidation of IBRC is laughable. They have been paid €5 million to date for their work and yet the interim report, published last November, was a list of problems and objections they were creating.

I support the new terms of reference as offering some chance that the public interest will be satisfied about the truth of the Siteserv issue and the issue of the suspiciously low interest rates being offered by IBRC will also be revealed. The last time I spoke about the original terms of reference, I spoke about information I had received regarding the interest rates on the financial dealings being charged to Denis O'Brien. Since then, I have received further information on one of the IBRC's largest debtors, a developer who had debts almost to the sum of €0.5 billion with that financial institution.

The information I have received is that part of some of the debts he had with IBRC showed he received multimillion euro loans with interests rates as low as 0.71%.

Other documentation shows that in 2012, a loan of more than €80 million from IBRC had its interest rate nearly halved. This is a new attempt to fix a mess by an arrogant Government that never really wanted these issues examined. The commission deserves our support. It is in the overwhelming public interest to remain alive to this and want to see the issue resolved.

I fear that module one will be all we will ever see and that we will only see practices in regards to interest rates examined. We will never deal with the documentation I have on why IBRC cut an individual's interest rates by almost half on a loan of more than €80 million and why it charged an interest rate of less than 0.75% on a number of loans at a time when the bloody country was going through the worst austerity it has ever seen.

These are questions that the Irish people deserve to have answered. We will support the terms of reference as a start to getting answers.

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