Marc MacSharry (Sligo-Leitrim, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, for sitting through the debate and it is a shame his ministerial colleague did not. The Minister of State will remember from the banking inquiry that no party operated en bloc. We had many a row but it tended to be individuals who often clashed with each other - intra-party, indeed - and we still managed to get a report out at the end. At no time did the jersey come into the room as robust questioning continued from each member of the banking inquiry of their own Ministers, former Ministers, a Taoiseach and a former Taoiseach. I am sad to say that did not happen when we look at the outcome of this particular report.

In the context of NAMA, I want to make a point that, as far as I am concerned, the opening lines of Frank Daly at the initial testimony were that he had listened to the wishes of both Governments. Based on the evidence I have seen and on the testimony we have heard, I think that, on the balance of probability, the Irish side of this equation allowed itself to be duped by the Northern side of the equation. Notwithstanding any potential criminality on the other side, and there has been much reference to Mr. Cushnahan and these other issues that are under investigation, and I do not want to involve myself in any prejudice, the reality is the Northern Ireland entity decided, "We need to extract our industry from that NAMA process because, down there, they are throwing developers under a bus. It will ruin our economy." Therefore, they set about extracting the construction industry of the North of Ireland from the NAMA process, and they succeeded. Somebody may have made a lot of money out of that process, and that is the subject of investigations. I think that, inadvertently, we allowed that to happen down here. We allowed ourselves to do that in an effort to help the Northern Ireland taxpayer, except we did that to the detriment of the taxpayer on this side of the Border. That is the shambles which this particular transaction is.

As Deputy Cullinane pointed out, the fact this might be suggested as an outlier is incomprehensible because, if so, then we hit the bulls eye, as he said. That in itself demands a full and thorough investigation. In fact, if there were none of these controversies, I think the work of NAMA should demand a full oversight investigation in any event because of the amount of money and of State assets and people's assets involved, irrespective of the complexion of things being done incorrectly.

I was in the Seanad as finance spokesman for Fianna Fáil when the NAMA legislation was going through. At the end of it, because none of us knew for sure what the right moves were, although there are many experts with the benefit of hindsight, I remember saying that, to my mind, we should keep this under review and that there may need to be a NAMA (No. 2) Bill or a NAMA (No. 3) Bill, as there should have been. There should have been the level of oversight that clearly has not been there and I believe we are reaping the difficulties of that today. I think all transactions have to be looked at. We have now blindly sold off loan books as if the problem is solved, when there are no houses being built in the country because most developers, instead of being subservient to a NAMA process, are now subservient to a Lone Star, a Mars Capital or whoever, and they cannot get funds. I am not talking about the big guys we are reading about in the Sunday newspapers; I am talking about the guy who built 20 houses in Colooney, County Sligo, or 30 houses in Galway, or bits and pieces throughout the country. This is the real scandal.

I want to finish on the issue of "inappropriate" ministerial action. It gives me no pleasure to criticise the Minister, Deputy Michael Noonan, for whom I have great personal time outside the ring and, indeed, for his work over the last number of years inside the ring. However, if John Snow is coming to see him and he happens to be the chairman of the company that is involved in buying something from the State for a very large amount of money the next day, potentially, then it should be reasonably obvious to any objective observer with a primary certificate, much less an intermediate or leaving certificate, that he is not coming to collect for the Red Cross. In fact, the minutes show he came specifically to talk about Project Eagle. While the Minister said, "You can go to talk to NAMA about that", I am sorry, but the complexion of that is grubby and it looks bad. The Minister, Deputy Noonan, is box office in Fine Gael and, sadly, the Fine Gael members have come en blocto say, "We are not playing any more. We are taking the football with us." I think that dilutes the great efforts the three Fine Gael members made in drawing up the report, or was it four? The fourth, or the alleged leaker in some quarters, was not at too many meetings, except key ones when we were kind of taking the old team position. As the Fine Gael members will have seen from the contributions of Members on this side of the House, I regularly clash with the Chair, which they will also have noted from meetings, and that is how the Committee of Public Accounts meetings should be.

Today is a sad day in that the Minister has used his position to rubbish what has been, since the foundation of the State, probably the best committee in terms of its cross-political party work and contribution. I think that is very unfortunate.

Although it is nothing to do with the Acting Chairman personally, a matter of the utmost urgency is that we need to get together as 158 Members to reschedule the business. My mandate is no different to that of Deputy Mattie McGrath, who has the benefit, like Kofi Annan, of standing up five times a day for ten minutes while I struggle to get two minutes once a week.

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