Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Tomorrow, it will be a year to the day since the setting up of the commission of investigation into the National Asset Management Agency, NAMA, under Mr. Justice Cooke. The second interim report landed on the Taoiseach's desk last week, which shows that NAMA does what it likes. Mr. Justice Cooke asked NAMA for the 40,000 documents it gave to the Comptroller and Auditor General for his investigation. That was a simple request but NAMA told him it would be too difficult to replicate. He had to ask the Comptroller and Auditor General for his copies. Mr. Justice Cooke then asked NAMA to produce all relevant documentation relating to Project Eagle. NAMA initially agreed and employed a team of solicitors to help it. They said they had created a key word search system that would filter the relevant documents. NAMA sent over 34,000 documents but it quickly became clear to Mr. Justice Cooke that NAMA was leaving out key documents. To quote from his report, "it became clear to the Commission that the methodology used by NAMA and its agents was not sufficiently reliable to capture confidently, all relevant items". If this was the first time that happened we might be a little shocked, but this type of behaviour from NAMA is the norm.

The Office of the Data Protection Commissioner has similar problems with NAMA. It found in February that it was in breach of its statutory functions under data protection law yet the chairman and chief executive officer, CEO, remain untouchable. Section 14 of the National Asset Management Agency Act sets out that NAMA is answerable to the Minister for Finance but one would think it was the other way around.

In February, I asked the Minister, Deputy Donohoe, if he would instruct NAMA to stop its policy of deleting emails. I got a nice letter back from the Minister telling me how wonderful NAMA was and why he would not do it. I put in a freedom of information, FOI, request relating to my question to the Minister. To my amazement I discovered that rather than answer my question, the Minister asked NAMA to answer it. The Minister, Deputy Donohoe, sent NAMA the proposed response from the Department of Finance and got its edited version back, which was provided to me as his answer. The Minister signed the NAMA version that arrived to my office. How bad is that? Is the Minister for Finance not supposed to be holding NAMA to account? Who is running this country?

At this stage, we cannot trust NAMA to supply the Cooke commission with all the evidence surrounding Project Eagle because of its incriminating nature. Does the Taoiseach not believe it is time that he relieved the NAMA chairman and CEO of their duties and put in a public interest director instead? Given the thrust of Mr. Justice Cooke's second interim report, they certainly appear to be obstructing the work of a commission of investigation. Is the Taoiseach content to kick the NAMA issue down the road, postponing any day of reckoning for it? Does he have any appetite for the truth around the workings of NAMA?

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