Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

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It is alleged that PIMCO discovered that payment of a fixer fee of £15 million was requested, to be paid if PIMCO was successful. PIMCO reported this to NAMA and withdrew from the process. According to the response to a Sinn Féin freedom of information request, the Minister for Finance, Deputy Noonan, [was aware of that but did absolutely nothing to prevent the sale of Project Eagle].

The Minister for Finance said he cannot direct NAMA under the NAMA Act but that is the height of bull. The reason we know that is because the Minister has directed NAMA on numerous occasions and not on minor issues. Let me remind the Minister, although he does not need reminding, that he issued NAMA with a direction to purchase the IBRC promissory note for more than €3 billion. However, that was not the only direction the Minister for Finance issued to NAMA that was outside of its commercial remit. He also issued directions, for example, in terms of the winding up of IBRC, providing short-term finance to IBRC, directing it to bid for the assets of IBRC and numerous other directions so why, when he knew there was a corrupted process in the sale of billions of euro of Irish taxpayers money, did he not direct NAMA to stop that sale? Indeed, in the context of the latest proposal whereby developers in NAMA are seeking to build 20,000 houses the Minister for Finance said in a meeting with NAMA that whatever it does it must make sure that the supply of housing does not interfere with its early repayment of bondholders. Again, it was not a written direction but it was advice or an instruction by the Minister. However, on this issue he was completely shtum.

Who benefitted from all of that? Who picked up the tab? Who reaped the benefit in a recovering economy? We know the answer to that. It is Cerberus which has reaped the benefit of the £190 million sterling that the Comptroller and Auditor General believes the Irish taxpayer has lost out, but that is only one sale. Since the Comptroller and Auditor General's report NAMA has sold billions of euro worth of assets. We know the process was corrupted yet we allow the agency to continue as if nothing happened. We know that information was leaked. We know there were fixer fees. We know all of that, but NAMA is still selling assets to the tune of €50 million per day, yet we turn a blind eye to it.

Who benefits? Let us look at the list I got last week from the Minister for Finance. A total of 13 of NAMA's developers escaped NAMA paying less than 5%of their debt. A total of 51 developers paid less than 5%,143 paid less than 10% of their debt to NAMA before they escaped the clutches of NAMA, 225 paid less than 20% and, 293 developers paid less than 30% of the debt. I was told as a Member of the Seanad by the late Brian Lenihan, and we were all told when he went on "Prime Time", that NAMA would pursue the developers to the ends of the earth to recoup the €74 billion they owed the Irish banks when their loans were transferred into NAMA. What is NAMA doing? It is transferring that debt to vulture funds so it is the vulture funds that will benefit from an upturn in the property market. As bad as that is, we now know or at least we have enough evidence to tell us that the process in Project Eagle was corrupt, and there may be other sales that are corrupt also. It is time to bring this to an end and to suspend NAMA sales until we have a proper investigation and stop the nonsense about having a discussion, which we have been having for the past year. Let us get down to the business of dealing with the terms of reference, which we submitted to the Taoiseach as far back as four months ago, and establish the commission of investigation. Let us have no more row-backs from Fine Gael, supported by Fianna Fáil, as we have seen here today.

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