Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this important topic. It is not a minute too early to set up this commission of investigation. I want to compliment, as I did earlier, Teachta Fleming and members of the Committee of Public Accounts for the outstanding work they have done. They are our last bastion in this House, as Teachtaí, representatives of the people, to deal with the scandals that go on.

I referred earlier to the unaccountability of the HSE for wastage in Cashel hospital. The committee is also dealing with the escalating costs of the national children's hospital, which has just been the subject of debate in the House. Members have no one else. Does the Minister want it shut down?

I have had great respect for the Minister for Finance. I was not present for his speech on this issue but I heard about what he said. I am very surprised that he would pour scorn on the Committee of Public Accounts. He has nearly threatened to injunct the committee. What is this - diktat by the Minister for Finance, the senior officials in the Department of Finance and the Secretary General and the Central Bank? They have plundered this country and they have allowed it to be plundered.

As I said during today's Leaders' Questions, the banks have been destroyed and we put €69 billion into them. Deputy Michael McGrath gave me a spin up from Cork on the fatal night of the bank bailout. I voted to rescue the banks. My God, it was some mistake. The banks gave us any figures they could to get us to bail them out. I will not say they told us lies but they told us untruths. They literally rode us backwards. I was there on the night NAMA was set up. It was like a wild animal being released in the woods and only God knew where it would end up. And now look where we are. One would think I was a prophet. Is there anywhere NAMA has not gone? It has gone all over the world and back. It stinks to high heaven. Why would it not? I am not impugning any individuals there but none of them had a clue. None of them ever hired a person, none of them ever made a shoe box, none of them had their own business. NAMA was staffed by bankers and officials and Revenue Commissioners that knew nothing about how the country has to work or how ordinary people have to earn their pay and put a roof over their heads.

The Central Bank let the banks throw people out of their homes at the same time as it was trying to deal with a housing crisis. However, it would not make the banks give out money to people. The banks have a monopoly. We cannot do what Germany does.

I asked today if it is any wonder that Britain voted for Brexit. They did so because of regulations. They can get money at 2% for SMEs in Germany, while we are at 8% here and 16% when the banks shove someone from a loan onto an overdraft. It is daylight robbery in front of our eyes. I am quite shocked.

We got a lot of diatribe and threats from Big Phil, the former Minister, the enforcer and his gang from 2011 to 2016. The public put paid to that. They gave them their marching orders. The public want the same thing to happen to NAMA.

I respect the Minister for Finance. He has given the House many more years service than I. I am shocked that he would use that kind of language against the Committee of Public Accounts. I do not know if he ever sat on the committee but many of his party colleagues over the years have. They have chaired the committee. I am shocked and disappointed and aghast. It is a bad day for democracy when the only watchdog we have, the Committee of Public Accounts, warts and flaws and all, is inhibited in the way its members have been. Certain gentlemen who I will not name have been judging them and threatening them and taking them on.

It is a sad day for democracy that we had this commission of investigation promised by a Taoiseach who is now in limbo. We learned about limbo when we learned about sins and confession. It is the place one goes if one is not too bad a sinner. One then waits a while. Some people say the Taoiseach, Deputy Enda Kenny, is in the exit lounge. I say he is in limbo. He has to atone for the mistakes he made here. He has to live up to the promises he made. He had better live up to them because it is not like the snow that came last Wednesday and went a day afterwards because we are in spring. I hope he is going to clear up his offences against this House and his betrayal of people before he goes out of that exit lounge and goes off to meet people elsewhere. I cannot believe that the Minister, Deputy Noonan, would come in and do this tonight.

I welcome the opportunity to submit the actions, inactions and quare actions of NAMA to further parliamentary scrutiny and to remind it that it is not a law unto itself. It is not a wild animal running rampant in the woods with its tail docked.

On 14 March 2017, a report from the Committee of Public Accounts concluded that the sale of Project Eagle has recorded a loss of £162 million. How many mortgages could that money repay? How many houses could have been given to the county councils for the rent to buy scheme? It would solve half of our housing crisis. This is a staggering amount even if NAMA continues to claim that its actions were wholly compliant with best practice - my God - and that the price they achieved represented best value for money. Words could not describe it.

In its findings, the Committee of Public Accounts made a number of conclusions. The first finding is that the sale of Project Eagle was not a well-designed sales process, as evidenced by the poor quality of record keeping. Record keeping? A clerk selling sweets in a sweet shop in Offaly would be told how to keep records and would keep them and the records would be available or else the clerk would get his or her marching orders. The clerk might be only ten or 12 or 13 years of age.

The second finding is that NAMA’s failure to effect Mr. Frank Cushnahan’s removal from NAMA’s Northern Ireland advisory committee, following his disclosures in relation to provision of consultancy services on behalf of a number of NAMA’s Northern Irish debtors, was a failure of corporate governance. Consultancy fees. This country is rotten with them. They have overrun the place. They have overrun Government agencies and the HSE. People are retiring two days before they are made consultants to the HSE. They are then getting more money for obscene practices and they had not done what they should have done. As for the governance, my God. I say well done to the Committee of Public Accounts.

The third finding is that the NAMA board was not explicitly informed of the extent of the financial loss which would be recorded in NAMA’s accounts as a result of setting the minimum reserve price of £1.3 billion. It was the board's duty to be aware. It is a board paid by the taxpayers. The board members must ensure the board's enactments comply with statutory rights and laws and rules. This is codswallop. Again, I say well done to the Committee of Public Accounts.

The fourth finding is that key elements of the sales strategy were influenced by a firm, PIMCO, which made the initial approach to NAMA in respect of buying the Northern Ireland portfolio. We have PIMCO and Namco and Damco and Matco and every kind of "Co" but no one is accountable. It is disgraceful. These companies are fly-by-night cowboys that can do what they like just because they have a trading name.

The vulture funds are the same. I have an acronym I could use to describe them but it would not be PIMCO. I have heard of pin cushions for putting pins into; I know what I would do with the pins.

The fifth finding is that the sales strategy pursued by NAMA included restrictions of such significance that the strategy could be described as seriously deficient. Well done again to the Committee of Public Accounts. It was seriously deficient. There was a property for sale in my county that was in NAMA. In fairness to NAMA, when I contacted it somebody came back to be, albeit belatedly. A bidder arrived and put in a bid. Within 20 minutes of his bid being put in, the owner of the property that was in NAMA telephoned him and said, "You are trying to buy my property". The man replied that he was buying properties acquired by NAMA. The auctioneer, who is a Tipperary man, should have been sacked for going back with that information. That is what is going on in NAMA. It is a boys club, although there might be some girls in it, and what is going on is fraudulent in the extreme. A man put in a bid in good faith. Dúirt bean liom go ndúirt bean léi go raibh póca ar an léine aige. The Leas-Cheann Comhairle knows what that means. The auctioneer took the bid and telephoned it through to the auctioneers in Dublin, a big fellow who is based not far from here. I will not name him but I hope the Minister knows where they are, and within 20 minutes - they had not time to drink a cup of coffee - the owner whose property was in NAMA phoned him and said, "You are trying to buy my property from NAMA and I want to buy it back". That property has gone back to the owner. When I contacted him he said the sale was withdrawn, and rightly so, but there was no investigation. That was partly my problem because the whistleblower who came to me did not want to go forward but now that it has been sold again I cannot find out about it. I write to NAMA and they tell me to write to someone else because they no longer have a vested interest in that. I do not know where it has gone. It is like the snow off the ditch. It has probably gone back to the man I mentioned, who is a Dungarvan man.

The sixth finding was that NAMA has been unable to demonstrate that by pursuing such a strategy it got value for money for the Irish State in respect of the price achieved. NAMA got no value for money for any of the properties; it got no value for anyone. "Dunnes Stores Better Value" was the slogan. NAMA would get value for money if it did a decent job but it got no value for anything because the people involved are literally a bunch of schoolboys. Obviously, they are career civil servants, as well as the former head of the Revenue Commissioners. They knew nothing about business. They were set up and pushed into those roles like a wild animal let into the woods. The sixth finding further states that each of those findings would be enormously damaging on their own but to have them combined reveals a level of reckless disregard for the people’s money that is utterly bewildering and yet, the Minister came in here this evening and tried to obstruct. The Minister of State, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, is more interested in tweeting. I do not know if he is tweeting about the weather or tweeting for Enda to come back into the Chamber or whatever. I have said previously that people who tweet might become twats.

This is what we have come to expect from those who believe they are above scrutiny and that any holding of them to account represents political interference with their business. They have to be held to account. It is our job to do that, and I salute the Chairman of the Committee of Public Accounts, Deputy Fleming, and others in that regard. They seem to be saying, "How dare the Oireachtas make a judgment against the all powerful NAMA". What are we here for? We are getting paid to do a job and we should do it. I will do it for the time I am a Member of this House because that is what the people sent me here to do. We can and must hold the powerful to account be they the people in NAMA, the Minister or whoever. It is the people's money they spend and we owe the people no less. These are the people who are turfed out on the road, who are before the courts and who have been evicted. Cromwell was not as bad. We resisted Cromwell in Clonmel, in Tipperary. He ran riot around the west of Ireland and other areas with his bat. If we think of Cromwell as NAMA, the people who will protect us are the Members of this House, including those who sat on the opposite side for the past four years.

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