Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am not easily shocked. I have been here only six years but I have never heard anything like what I heard from the Minister. I was shocked by it. I was also shocked by his personal attack on the Chairman of the Committee of Public Accounts. I thank the Chairman and all the members of the PAC for the work they did. It is a powerful report and given the remit they had they did incredibly well.

The Minister might want it to be all about him but people say it is not all about him. I think, however, it might suit the Minister to have it about himself because he has been very fond of taking the focus away from NAMA where the focus should be. Let us talk about NAMA.

I read the report twice, then went back over it and marked it. The committee report states:

The Committee's view is that the Sale of Project Eagle was marked by inadequate record keeping, weaknesses in relation to the management of conflicts of interest, a seriously deficient sales process and, ultimately, an inability by NAMA to demonstrate that it had obtained best value for money for the State. ... It is the opinion of the Committee that NAMA's failure to effect Mr Frank Cushnahan's removal from the Northern Ireland Advisory Committee ... was a failure of corporate governance by NAMA.

Frank Cushnahan made declarations of interest to the Northern Ireland advisory committee, NIAC, on 13 April 2011; 27 June 2011 and 18 October 2011 and in June 2012 he was reappointed to the board. The Minister for Finance said:

I would like to thank Frank Cushnahan and Brian Rowntree for agreeing to continue serving on NAMA's Northern Ireland Advisory Committee. I see this Committee as having a very important role in assisting NAMA to meet its objectives on both sides of the border. It is very important that NAMA, like other agencies, acts on an all-island basis.

Did he not know the information Cushnahan had already given to the NIAC? If he did not why not?

The report continues:

it is the view of the Committee that NAMA was influenced by the PIMCO proposal when deciding on the minimum reserve price, and key elements of the sales process. ... The decision by NAMA not to inform Lazard, its loan sales advisor, of the reasons for PIMCO's withdrawal indicates limits to the role that Lazard was given in relation to the sales process.

Its task was backside covering. The committee report continues "the letter of comfort provided by Lazard to NAMA [failed] to provide assurance that the sales strategy followed by NAMA in relation to Project Eagle was the best one possible." NAMA's single sale process was ridiculous.

The committee report states:

Lazard was provided with a verbal briefing on 13 January 2014 having originally signed a non-disclosure agreement ... on 9 January 2014. NAMA's evidence to the Committee was that it did not have any briefing document or minutes of this initial briefing.

NAMA had no briefing document yet it paid Lazard over £4 million. The report states "The Board agreed an exception to Loan Policy wherein the data room would contain redacted November 2009 valuations for the Top 55 properties (85% by value) and full valuations for the balance of 800 properties (15% by value)." All the information for the main stock was not available to everybody but it was available to anyone who was prepared to pay the cabal that was orchestrating the whole sale.

On 12 December 2013 Ronnie Hanna, head of asset recovery in NAMA at the time, presented a paper to the board which called for a closed sale and set the price at £1.3 billion. The committee found this unacceptable. The December 2013 paper presented by Ronnie Hanna was a sales pitch for PIMCO but it was not all about PIMCO. It was really a sales pitch for the developers in Northern Ireland who had Frank Cushnahan as their adviser, Dave Watters as their accountant, Tughans as solicitors and their man in NAMA, Ronnie Hanna. I have uncovered an internal NAMA e-mail of 11 December 2013, the day before the paper was presented to the board from Cian Kealy, a member of Ronnie Hanna's asset recovery team to Tuvi Keinan of Brown Rudnick, who was working with Cushnahan and Ian Coulter from 2012. Cian Kealy wrote it would be a "big day" tomorrow. Keinan replied that they looked forward to it. I bet they did. It was a big day all right, when the NAMA board was hoodwinked by the head of asset recovery. It has emerged from the PAC hearings that the NAMA board destroyed the handwritten notes taken at that board meeting on 12 December 2013. It would. In any other country the destruction of records by a state organisation would amount to serious criminality but not in Ireland. Speaking of destroying records, in March 2015, the month before NAMA records became accessible under freedom of information it became NAMA policy to delete the e-mails deemed "non-business critical" of all former NAMA staff 12 months after they had left the agency. Even more worrying is the fact that NAMA board members' e-mails would be deleted as soon as they had left. The destruction of key records will certainly make life more difficult for the commission of investigation.

I have also received correspondence from Namaleakson NAMA's freedom of information system. One is from an ex-NAMA employee who says that when working in NAMA staff were made aware of the protocols and procedures regarding freedom of information requests. However, there was a facility to quickly search for and recover any e-mails deleted from in-boxes. It seems that the freedom of information guys could not search this. The individual does not believe that proper searches were carried out as not all in-boxes were searched. The Minister should immediately suspend NAMA's policy of deleting e-mails and records but he is unlikely to do that.

The power that NAMA wields knows no bounds. A report published last weekend by Jim Power and Lisney estate agency estimated that NAMA had lost the Irish people €18 billion through its policy of fire-selling to vulture funds. Yesterday Lisney retracted its support for the report because NAMA let it be known that it would never sell another piece of property through Lisney if it did not do so. What is it like? For over six years there has been an incestuous relationship between the Department of Finance and the US vulture funds, which have bought up large parts of this island. The Committee of Public Accounts report finds that it was inappropriate for the Minister for Finance, Deputy Noonan, to meet Cerberus the day before the bids were due for NAMA's Project Eagle and it is right. That was not the first time this happened. At the same time as the NAMA Northern Ireland loan sale was going on, the liquidator for the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation, IBRC, was in the process of selling Project Sand, which comprised 12,700 Irish residential mortgages from the former Irish Nationwide Building Society with a par value of €1.8 billion. The bidding for Project Sand closed on 15 March 2014 but it seems some bidders sought to influence the sales process through meetings and engagements with Department of Finance officials. On 23 January 2014 the Minister met Lone Star, a US vulture fund, in Davos.

Later that week, on 28 January, John Moran, Secretary General of the Department of Finance at the time, met Lone Star in Merrion Street. The briefing e-mail Lone Star sent to John Moran stated Lone Star had recently reiterated its strong desire to acquire a significant portion of the IBRC assets currently for sale and was currently actively involved in a number of IBRC loan sale processes, including Project Sand. On 14 March 2014, the day before bids were due for Project Sand, the Secretary General, John Moran, received an e-mail to arrange another meeting, this time with Oaktree Capital, another US vulture fund which was also in the running for Project Sand. Like in the case of Lone Star, the request for a meeting was accepted. Oaktree Capital e-mailed the Department of Finance, looking for a meeting. It stated the reason for calling was to see if Mr. Moran could spare ten or 15 minutes of his time to discuss Project Sand and Oaktree's approach to the sale. It stated that Oaktree would the next day submit its final bid for the mortgage loans being sold by the special liquidators of IBRC and that if Mr. Moran had a few minutes, Oaktree would very much appreciate an opportunity to discuss its approach to the management of the acquired mortgage loans.

There were 13 indicative bidders for Project Sand. Who were the winners? Two of them, believe it or not - Oaktree and Lone Star. They split the portfolio between them. How convenient is that?

It seems it will stand a US vulture fund in good stead, if they are bidding on NAMA or IBRC loans, to meet and engage with the top officials in the Department of Finance in the months before, weeks before and even - incredibly - on the day before the bids are due. That approach worked for Cerberus, Oaktree and Lone Star, which between them have now bought nearly €50 billion of Irish loans. Is it proper policy for officials and the Minister for Finance to meet and engage with US vulture funds who are actively involved in bidding on Irish loans that are supposed to be for sale on the open market? There is no way it would happen in any other country in Europe.

Deputy McDonald asked if Project Eagle is the norm. I can assure her that it is. If we examine it, we will find that the total workings of NAMA will prove to be the biggest financial scandal in the history of this State. Are we are prepared to look at it or are we going to bury it for as long as we can like we did with other abuses over the years? The Minister for Finance should be ashamed of himself. Is he fit for his job anymore? No, he is not.

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