David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the publication of the report and thank, in the first instance, the Chairman of the Committee of Public Accounts, Deputy Fleming, the secretariat and all the members of the committee for their work, including those from Fine Gael. I commend the work of the Comptroller and Auditor General who produced a report that was evidence based, balanced and reasonable, and was an act of genuine public service.

What we saw since the Comptroller and Auditor General did his work was an unprecedented attack of such vicious nature on his office, on him personally and on his staff, by NAMA and by others. It was extraordinary. He and his staff have been vindicated and I believe the Committee of Public Accounts has been vindicated in the work that we have done.

However, that viciousness and all that was wrong about that attack has been matched in this Chamber today by the Minister for Finance, Deputy Michael Noonan. He should hang his head in shame, as he used the opportunity he had today, not to talk about the deficiencies in the loan sale or about the report itself, but to attack the Chair of the Committee of Public Accounts and, by extension, all of us who make up that committee. I want to put on the record that, while I have absolute, full support for and confidence in the Chairman of the Committee of Public Accounts and all its members, I have no confidence whatsoever in the Minister for Finance. He should resign, given the disgraceful contribution he made today. Furthermore, he did not even afford the respect that is due to all of the Members by staying for the full debate. It is appalling.

What is all this about? It is about the only loan sale in NAMA that we, as public representatives, went through and examined forensically. Look what unfolded and look at what we uncovered. If this case was an outlier or exception, we hit the bullseye. That simply could not be. This was shoddy work by NAMA. It was a compromised, corrupted process and a flawed sales process.

What did we learn as a committee? We learned that Project Eagle was conceived, not by the NAMA board nor by the NAMA executive, but by Tuvi Keinan of Brown Rudnick, Ian Coulter of Tughan's, and Mr. Frank Cushnehan, who was at the time a member of the Northern Ireland advisory committee, NIAC, of NAMA. When they met in 2012, they hatched a plan. What was the first thing they agreed? Fixer's fees of £15 million. That led to a reverse inquiry to NAMA by Pimco, with which they were working. Imagine a scenario in which a serving member of the Northern Ireland advisory committee of NAMA was meeting with these people, agreeing fixer's fees, and then meeting with DUP Ministers in the North as a serving member of the NIAC. It is extraordinary that all of it happened and that, to this day, neither NAMA nor the Minister for Finance can accept that it was a compromised process.

The Minister for Finance should resign because of his disgraceful performance here today. We need a commission of investigation. It needs to be established quickly and we need to see the terms of reference. We need to get under the bonnet, not of the value for money issues that we in the Committee of Public Accounts examined, but of the allegations of corruption which loom large and hang over this loan sale. They can only be dealt with, in my view, by a full commission of investigation. I have no confidence in the Fine Gael Deputies on the opposite bench or the Minister for Finance to do it, from what I have heard today.

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