Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am sharing my time with Deputy Sean Fleming.

I thank each member of the Committee of Public Accounts for the enormous work they put into this process and the completion of the report. I thank the Chairman, in particular, for his diligence and professionalism in steering that process.

The Minister has just made a very ill judged speech. As a sitting Minister for Finance, he has launched an unprecedented attack on the Committee of Public Accounts of this House. He has launched a scathing attack on the Chairman of that committee and on his integrity. He has made the very deliberate choice to dedicate the vast majority of his speech to defending his own personal position and that of his Department. It is very clear from his remarks that he does not accept the report of the Committee of Public Accounts. He has certainly not put on the record that he accepts the report. He has completely ignored the core findings and conclusions set out in that report. It is unequivocally clear that he does not want to see any commission of investigation into Project Eagle. That is as clear as night follows day.

That leaves us in a position where the Taoiseach has repeatedly reassured the House that there would be a commission of investigation but the Minister came to the House tonight to pour as much cold water on that as he could possibly find.

What the Minister completely ignored in his contribution is what I would regard as the central finding of the Committee of Public Accounts, which was that the sale of Project Eagle was marked by inadequate record-keeping, weaknesses in the management of conflicts of interest, a seriously deficient sales process and, ultimately, an inability by NAMA to demonstrate it had obtained the best value for money for the State. We have a situation where the constitutional office of the Comptroller and Auditor General has, in an entirely independent fashion, completed a report which made serious findings against NAMA. The Committee of Public Accounts, the committee empowered by the House to examine the reports of the Comptroller and Auditor General, has found in favour of the Comptroller and Auditor General and not in favour of NAMA. That is the broad conclusion that is evident when one reads the report. However, the Minister clearly does not accept the report of the Comptroller and Auditor General or the position of the Committee of Public Accounts. He is standing four-square behind NAMA. That is where we are tonight. Let us not dress it up or put a tooth in it. That is the situation with which we are faced.

I have read all the documentation again and I have tried to be as independent as I possibly can be. There is no doubt in my mind that the Project Eagle sales process was fundamentally flawed. It was not a genuinely open or competitive sales process from the very beginning because the origin of it came from the approach made to NAMA through Brown Rudnick on behalf of PIMCO. There are several matters which blow me away. Mr. Frank Cushnahan, a member of NAMA’s Northern Ireland advisory committee, declared to the committee on several occasions in 2011 and 2012 that he was acting in an advisory capacity to NAMA debtors in Northern Ireland. Apparently, these were half the book value of all NAMA debtors in Northern Ireland but he was allowed to remain on the committee. For the life of me, I cannot get my head around that. When it became clear that he was part of the success fee arrangement involving PIMCO, Brown Rudnick, Tughans and the €16 million to be shared, NAMA never contacted him. He had left the advisory committee at that stage but NAMA did not even bother its backside to contact him to ask what that was all about.

The Minister did not even acknowledge these issues in his 13-minute contribution in the House tonight. It was very ill-judged on his part for the Minister to use his entire contribution to defend his own personal position. To put my view on the record, it was inappropriate and ill-judged for the Minister to hold a meeting on the eve of the close of bids. Nobody is impugning the Minister's integrity or saying his motives were in any way questionable. I do not believe they were. However, I believe it was the wrong decision. The Minister should take it on the chin and accept it. The Minister's speech tonight was disgraceful.

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