Joe Costello (Dublin Central, Labour)
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I am pleased to have the opportunity to raise this important matter. NAMA was established in May 2009 with the remit of transferring the loans on key developments and assets from the books of State-guaranteed banks in return for Government-guaranteed securities. To date, it has accumulated €40 billion of loans on its books and, as such, has an obligation to the State to realise the maximum value on its sites. While NAMA is not the titleholder, landowner or developer of the assets acquired, the assets are strongly influenced by NAMA. This was witnessed in Dublin Central where we saw what happened to the Lighthouse Cinema on foot of upward-only rent reviews and the insistence by NAMA that the developers should extract the maximum possible commercial rent. That resulted in a rent increasing from €100,000 to €200,000 and eventually to €500,000, which is quite extraordinary in these recessionary times.

What is worse is that NAMA is operating under a veil of secrecy; it is a secret organisation. There is no asset map of NAMA property and NAMA has stated that it does not intend to produce one. NAMA considers itself to be subject to the same client-bank clauses of confidentiality.

However, NAMA is much more than a bank or asset management agency. It controls property with a value of almost one third of national GDP. Whatever NAMA does with that property will impact hugely on the future development of our economy and will play a major role in its recovery or otherwise. Nevertheless, NAMA's actions are shrouded in secrecy. There is speculation about which lands and developers are in the control of NAMA but there is no definitive way of confirming its assets. The public cannot get a proper picture of what the position is at a given time.

Once a loan is acquired by NAMA the developer is obliged to submit a business plan within 30 days. NAMA considers the plan, approves it and manages how it is to be implemented. A business plan includes all of the developer's assets but is not necessarily subject to a development-by-development approach. Again, the business plans and proposals are not subject to public scrutiny. Even the local authorities have no statutory right to have an input or to scrutinise these plans. Dublin City Council has been unable to meet the representatives of NAMA. Its requests have been refused on three separate occasions. There are no defined final dates or time limits imposed on business plan reviews. Again, there is no transparency in monitoring how NAMA does its work.

With such a vast land bank of assets throughout the country NAMAhas the potential to plan strategically on a national basis and could play a major role in creating conditions for economic recovery. Through strategic planning NAMA could maximise the potential of planned or existing infrastructure and thereby enhance the potential of certain NAMA lands. While it is clear that it will take decades to emerge from the current economic crisis, NAMA appears to have no long-term strategic view. It is noteworthy that no planners are employed by the agency. Just as the boom was "developer-led", so too is the recession due to the developer-led approach of NAMA.

The programme for Government contains a commitment to ensuring that NAMA can yield a social or cultural dividend. Page 58 of the programme states: "We will seek to capture some public good from NAMA by identifying buildings that have no commercial potential, and which might be suitable as local facilities for art and culture". To date, NAMA has failed to state how this can or will be achieved, and the lack of transparency and accountability in NAMA makes it impossible to pursue the matter. The potential to realise a social, community or cultural dividend from NAMA is dependent on NAMA taking a long-term strategic view. Indeed, as long as the remit of NAMA remains the creation of the maximum return on assets at all costs, it is likely that substantial opportunities in the public interest could be overlooked or simply not prioritised.

The first essential step is a review of the freedom of information legislation to bring NAMA within its remit. The argument that NAMA's dealings are commercially sensitive is spurious. It should be possible to protect the more commercially sensitive information while at the same time ensuring that NAMA operates in a transparent, accountable manner, that it operates strategically in the national interest and that the public can see what NAMA is doing as the case arises.

Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)
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I thank the Deputy for raising this matter. I have a great deal of sympathy with the arguments he advances. It is regrettable that when the NAMA legislation was enacted it was not possible for the House to agree that an oversight committee of the House should be established to monitor NAMA's affairs. I advocated that argument at the time and it was debated. Given the huge significance of this issue, an oversight committee of the House would have been very helpful both within and outside the House.

If there were more openness about the transactions taking place, it would assist the re-emergence of a market. Part of the difficulty we have been suffering for the last three years of stasis in the market following the effective collapse of the banking system is the absence of openness about the transactions that are taking place. The view has been put to me, and I am inclined to believe it has merit, that if there was a requirement for notification of transactions taking place, be it with regard to commercial rents or the purchase of properties both domestic and commercial, it would assist in the re-emergence of a market. People would know where they stand and this would help to establish a floor in the market.

None of this is happening because, as Deputy Costello has argued, many of these transactions are effectively secret at present. Apart from anything else, that encourages bad practices whereby estate agents are reverting to old bad habits by puffing and mystifying the terms of actual transactions. All that is unhelpful. I will counsel my colleagues that this ought to be examined carefully. Deputy Costello is aware that my colleague, Deputy Howlin, the Minister with responsibility for public expenditure and reform is focused on these issues in the context of the Government's reform programme. I can assure the Deputy that whether it is NAMA, the National Treasury Management Agency the Central Bank or other publicly-funded bodies in the banking and financial sector, the arguments he has raised will be given full consideration by my colleagues.

The Government is committed to an elaborate reform programme in respect of legislation to restore the Freedom of Information Act and the extension of its remit to public bodies such as the Garda Síochána. Obviously, it will not include the security dimensions of the Garda but it will be extended to the administrative side. The Government will extend the Freedom of Information Act and the Ombudsman Act to ensure that all statutory bodies, and all bodies significantly funded from the public purse, are covered. These are far-reaching reforms which are being spearheaded by the Minister, Deputy Howlin. The programme set out for him in the programme for Government is significant. He is consulting with other Ministers on the effective repeal of the 2003 amendment Act in its entirety, the inclusion of all statutory bodies including those under the aegis of the Department of Finance and the Department of Justice and Equality in particular and the identification of any other concerns that might exist regarding the impact of the Freedom of Information Acts on the discharge of Government business.

The issues raised by Deputy Costello are very important and I believe my colleagues in Government share my opinion. We are trying to get a handle on NAMA's position at present. Everybody knows how the architecture of NAMA was created and came into being; there is no point in going back over the arguments. It is in existence. Questions of commercial sensitivity arise and also with regard to matters to do with confidentiality in its proper place, but that is not to say there ought not to be oversight, and ideally parliamentary oversight.

Questions of transparency ought to be dealt with. I am sure that my colleague, the Minister with responsibility for public expenditure and reform, Deputy Howlin, will respond in due course.