Results 5,541-5,560 of 32,583 for speaker:Richard Bruton

National Asset Management Agency Bill 2009: Second Stage (16 Sep 2009)

Richard Bruton: That view is wrong. The history of this House is strewn with cases in which Irish people have paid dearly because important questions were not asked or, if asked, were not answered. I am determined that we will not leave questions unasked and unanswered in this debate.

National Asset Management Agency Bill 2009: Second Stage (16 Sep 2009)

Richard Bruton: I have also heard the argument of political opportunism - that the Opposition should let this go to avoid facing difficult decisions. That, again, is a dangerous route. The patriotic thing to do now is to ask the hard questions, put this under real scrutiny and expose the fact that we are making a mistake. We are embarking on a ship that is not seaworthy and heading in a direction that...

National Asset Management Agency Bill 2009: Second Stage (16 Sep 2009)

Richard Bruton: The Government is unwilling to discuss the notion that there are elements of the banks that are good and need protection and elements that are bad and do not need to be protected. Fine Gael's approach to this has led us to separate the flow of credit solution from the bank resolution solution. We are doing that for sound reasons: we can use public money more effectively if we make that...

National Asset Management Agency Bill 2009: Second Stage (16 Sep 2009)

Richard Bruton: We will stand at the ready to protect and save what is systemically important in the banking system so that if the banks cannot meet stress tests and must come to the State for aid, it will clearly be on the basis of saving what is important - the parts that will keep our economy, our businesses and our families going - but leaving certain investors to deal with the toxic loans and the bad...

National Asset Management Agency Bill 2009: Second Stage (16 Sep 2009)

Richard Bruton: The Taoiseach is shifting the burden from where it was created to the taxpayer. That is not the correct approach we should adopt. NAMA fails the critical tests of being effective, fair and of involving the least cost. It does not square up to those criteria. Its origins do not start with the needs of enterprises and families. It does not distinguish the important part of banking from the...

National Asset Management Agency Bill 2009: Second Stage (16 Sep 2009)

Richard Bruton: -----which will be revealed at some stage during the debate. We are embarking on paying out €54,000 million of taxpayers' money, yet we will now have to wait until Committee Stage to see if it will result in credit flowing to business. Does that not put a huge question mark over the thinking that has gone into this legislation?

National Asset Management Agency Bill 2009: Second Stage (16 Sep 2009)

Richard Bruton: Once one decides to pay hope value instead of market value, one destroys the concept of fairness. It implies that taxpayers are being forced to pay more for what they are getting than what they ought to pay. That approach destroys the concept of fairness. There is plenty of international evidence to show that the state is not good at running asset recovery. When political objectives are...

National Asset Management Agency Bill 2009: Second Stage (16 Sep 2009)

Richard Bruton: I have heard the Minister say time and again that the collapse of Lehman Brothers is the reason we have to protect everyone. He has learned the wrong lesson. The problem with Lehman Brothers was that its collapse spread panic because there was no framework for managing what it was doing. It was not the case that it was letting investors and bondholders suffer losses; that was not what was...

National Asset Management Agency Bill 2009: Second Stage (16 Sep 2009)

Richard Bruton: There were not raised on behalf of the Irish taxpayer.

National Asset Management Agency Bill 2009: Second Stage (16 Sep 2009)

Richard Bruton: The taxpayer does not have an obligation to meet them. The interests of foreign investors considering investing in Irish Government paper are the same as those of the Irish taxpayer. They want to see a government that is frugal with its money and that will not be a soft touch for bankers who have made bad investments.

National Asset Management Agency Bill 2009: Second Stage (16 Sep 2009)

Richard Bruton: They want a government that will be careful and will approach banking, as it does ever other issue, in a tough-minded way. The mistake the Minister is making is that he believes that bondholders cannot discriminate between investments made in banks and investments made in a sovereign state that is determined to manage its affairs effectively. That mistake underlies the Ministers' approach....

National Asset Management Agency Bill 2009: Second Stage (16 Sep 2009)

Richard Bruton: There was no attempt to have a serious engagement on these matters. That is one of the flaws in the approach.

National Asset Management Agency Bill 2009: Second Stage (16 Sep 2009)

Richard Bruton: It is extraordinary that there has been a deafening silence. Those who are defending this approach are largely conscripts and people who have vested interests in the system. We need an objective debate on this. Let us not forget that these are decisions where the interests of taxpayers and the interests of investors in banks are pitted against one another. We have to make decisions that...

National Asset Management Agency Bill 2009: Second Stage (16 Sep 2009)

Richard Bruton: The way in which alternatives have been treated by other Ministers and by the Government undermines confidence in this debate. It has not been focused on defending what has been put forward in the NAMA legislation, the overpaying that is proposed. Why is it proposed to pay this long-term economic value? All the debate has been about the Government trying to discredit alternatives....

National Asset Management Agency Bill 2009: Second Stage (16 Sep 2009)

Richard Bruton: -----because they were questioning pillars of Government policy. We were told that scarcely a year ago. The critics today are being treated in the same way. We need to heed the critics because we have to make such significant decisions. Certain disinterested evaluations of what is proposed has been made and a number of international sources have commented. The ECB has said beware of...

National Asset Management Agency Bill 2009: Second Stage (16 Sep 2009)

Richard Bruton: -----but the Minister is insistent on doing it.

National Asset Management Agency Bill 2009: Second Stage (16 Sep 2009)

Richard Bruton: The Swedish Minister for Finance has said the Swedish model is entirely different from what the Minister proposes and it was based on tough hard-nosed approach to valuation, again something which the Minister rejects. The IMF warned of the pitfalls of seeking to avoid nationalisation as a guiding principle of policy and so forcing the State to engage in this charade of evaluations - again...

National Asset Management Agency Bill 2009: Second Stage (16 Sep 2009)

Richard Bruton: What is France doing now? It has switched to a national recovery bank along the lines proposed by Fine Gael. It is pursuing the approach we have adopted of getting credit going to the companies that need it and using ECB liquidity.

National Asset Management Agency Bill 2009: Second Stage (16 Sep 2009)

Richard Bruton: It is important for the Minister to remember that international best practice on the way to deal with a banking crisis has evolved since he first hatched the NAMA approach. At that stage, examples of recovery banks were not plentiful but now we have a very good example of a recovery bank that is even being reported on the national airwaves. Bank resolutions that separated good from bad and...

National Asset Management Agency Bill 2009: Second Stage (16 Sep 2009)

Richard Bruton: -----subordinated bonds that were involved in that case. Our approach to the debate is that we are determined to try to stop this Bill. We believe that it is a mistake, but we are not going to be pigheaded. If we lose the debate on the principle, we will persist in trying to get the best deal to protect the taxpayer in anything that goes ahead. We want to see amendments. We want to see a...