Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

I support the amendments to the Government motion seeking to focus the commission of investigation but also seeking to suspend NAMA sales pending the completion of the investigation. We are in the habit of having investigations and commissions that tread over the same ground.

It remains to be seen if this investigation will get us any further. That said, it is walking on the foundation of the Comptroller and Auditor General's report on Project Eagle, which tells us quite a lot about what we need to know about NAMA's operations. According to the Comptroller and Auditor General, NAMA incurred a potential loss to the taxpayer of €223 million on the sale of a portfolio of all of its remaining 860 Northern Irish loans and 900-plus properties to Cerberus for €1.53 billion in April 2014. However, according to The Irish Times, the original book value of the Project Eagle loans was more than €6 billion. In that sense, the true loss to the State was actually approximately €4.5 billion and not €223 million.

I want to challenge again the typical response those of us on the left received throughout NAMA's existence from the Minister for Finance, Deputy Noonan, when we highlighted how NAMA's brief could have been radically altered in order to make a significant contribution to the resolution of the housing and accommodation crisis. The Minister's refrain was that NAMA had to get the best deal possible for the taxpayer. The uncontested facts around Project Eagle alone knock that one on the head. I put it to the Minister and the Government that not utilising NAMA's assets, even on the basis of their own narrow criteria of the best deal for the taxpayer, does not make sense. Had NAMA's resources and assets, including €2.4 billion in cash reserves last year and a projected €2.8 billion in overseas sales, been deployed to help solve the housing crisis over the past three years, how much would have been saved out of the tens of millions that have been spent on emergency accommodation? How many of the millions spent on rent supplement and the housing assistance payment, HAP, for extortionate rents would have been saved?

A 2014 National Economic and Social Council, NESC, report found there were 47,000 households on rent supplement that were not on the housing list. According to the Department of Social Protection, in 2014-15 there were between 30,000 and 31,500 tenancies with private landlords supported by the rental accommodation scheme, RAS, which would have been taken off the housing list. In addition, there are 8,800 households on the housing assistance payment, HAP. All of these schemes together cost approximately €500 million in handouts to private landlords. This is money that could be better spent building and acquiring permanent public housing. Some €6 billion was spent on rent subsidies to private landlords since 2004. That could have been used to build 60,000 permanent council homes by now.

Even that is not the full picture. There is also the societal costs that cannot be translated easily into monetary statistics. They include the mental and physical health of those who have experienced homelessness and overcrowding and the disruption to the schooling of children forced to live in emergency accommodation. It is clear that these calculations did not even enter the heads of those in this Government and, despite what we now know, nor is the Government inclined to change course now. Instead, its main concern is to prevent the retooling of NAMA as a public housing body. Why? It is because of the depressing impact it would have on private developers' ability to turn a big profit. According to the CEO of NAMA, Brendan McDonagh, many developers are, in his words, "not satisfied" with a €20,000 profit on a €300,000 home. They would rather wait until prices rose to a point at which a €50,000 profit was possible. He explained this to the special housing committee that was set up by this House after last year's election. He stated:

...if sales prices went up by 5%, the profit would increase to €30,000. If they went up 10%, the profit would increase to €40,000. That is the dynamic of the market.

The strength of my argument is also shown by estimates on the component costs of a €330,000 house that were provided to the committee by the Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland. These estimates allow for nearly €40,000 in developer's profit on a €330,000 house. According to the chair of NAMA, Frank Daly, land speculators in Dublin are currently seeking returns of 15% to 20%. That NAMA has acted as an accessory to the de facto strike in investment by developers is, of course, perfectly legal. However, for some of us it is even a bigger scandal that is worthy of exposure. It is even bigger a scandal than what has happened with Project Eagle, though that be scandal itself.

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