Results 1,041-1,060 of 35,526 for speaker:Pearse Doherty

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Pre-Budget Engagement (18 Sep 2024)

Pearse Doherty: The number of people who actually had a pension pot above €2 million in the last year for which data is available from Revenue is just over 230. These are gold-plated pensions that are costing hundreds of millions of euro. Ordinary taxpayers, people who are working in Tesco at the minute, are paying taxes to subsidise these pensions. The Minister not only wants to see these...

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Pre-Budget Engagement (18 Sep 2024)

Pearse Doherty: The last time Fianna Fáil was in government, yes.

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Pre-Budget Engagement (18 Sep 2024)

Pearse Doherty: No, the taxpayer should not be subsidising pensions that are in excess of €80,000. That is what the Minister is planning to do.

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Pre-Budget Engagement (18 Sep 2024)

Pearse Doherty: Really, the Minister is just spending some of the surpluses next year because they are already banked this year. This is not money that the Minister is expecting to get next year. It is already banked this year but he is trying to tie it to AIB. Is that the situation?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: General Scheme of the Conclusion of IBRC Special Liquidation and Dissolution of NAMA Bill: Department of Finance (18 Sep 2024)

Pearse Doherty: I appreciate the witnesses' attendance at the committee. I want to return to the issues that have been touched on by my two colleagues. The one thing we should never say when talking about the banking collapse, NAMA and the losses that resulted in huge austerity, and perhaps the witnesses did not mean in this way, is that we are all to blame or everyone is to blame, which I think were the...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: General Scheme of the Conclusion of IBRC Special Liquidation and Dissolution of NAMA Bill: Department of Finance (18 Sep 2024)

Pearse Doherty: Excuse me, it did not overpay for the loans. The legislation passed by this House required the valuation at the time to consider an uplift between 0% and 25% and the average uplift was 8.6%. History will tell you, as a property management agency, that the uplift was way above 8.6%. Property has gone through the roof since 2011, yet NAMA did not recover the €74 billion, or anywhere...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: General Scheme of the Conclusion of IBRC Special Liquidation and Dissolution of NAMA Bill: Department of Finance (18 Sep 2024)

Pearse Doherty: Was that in the legislation?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: General Scheme of the Conclusion of IBRC Special Liquidation and Dissolution of NAMA Bill: Department of Finance (18 Sep 2024)

Pearse Doherty: When Mr. Carville says “expeditiously”, does that give comfort to NAMA in relation to fire sales, when it sold property that turned out to incur multiple millions of euro in losses, because the developers who bought those properties flipped them for hundreds of millions of euro shortly afterwards? Does that word “expeditiously” trump value for money or the...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: General Scheme of the Conclusion of IBRC Special Liquidation and Dissolution of NAMA Bill: Department of Finance (18 Sep 2024)

Pearse Doherty: I will ask the original question again. Was it not NAMA’s objective to recover as much of the €74 billion in loans it had on its books at the point in the end of 2021? Was that not the objective?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: General Scheme of the Conclusion of IBRC Special Liquidation and Dissolution of NAMA Bill: Department of Finance (18 Sep 2024)

Pearse Doherty: Therefore, it was to recover as much of the €74 billion in loans it had on its books at that point in time. Is that not a fair assumption of what NAMA was required to do?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: General Scheme of the Conclusion of IBRC Special Liquidation and Dissolution of NAMA Bill: Department of Finance (18 Sep 2024)

Pearse Doherty: Is Mr. Carville therefore saying that it was not NAMA’s objective to recover as much of the €74 billion loans it had on its books? Is that what he is saying? I have asked him three times and he will not say “Yes”. If you-----

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: General Scheme of the Conclusion of IBRC Special Liquidation and Dissolution of NAMA Bill: Department of Finance (18 Sep 2024)

Pearse Doherty: Let me just say this. I have never said in any of the questions I put to Mr. Carville four times that it was NAMA’s job to get the €74 billion back. I asked if it was not the case that it was NAMA’s job to recover as much of that €74 billion it had in the loans on its books at the end of 2011.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: General Scheme of the Conclusion of IBRC Special Liquidation and Dissolution of NAMA Bill: Department of Finance (18 Sep 2024)

Pearse Doherty: It therefore was its job to get as much of those loans back. It had €74 billion in loans. When Mr. Brendan McDonagh came before this committee and said NAMA would pursue the developers to the ends of the earth, the sentiment of what he was telling us was that it was going to try to recover as much of the €74 billion in loans that it, as an organisation, legally had. Would...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: General Scheme of the Conclusion of IBRC Special Liquidation and Dissolution of NAMA Bill: Department of Finance (18 Sep 2024)

Pearse Doherty: That was not the lens that was suggested when the Minister for Finance came to the Seanad or the Dáil. They were very open about this before this committee. The idea was not just to recover the amount of money that was paid. There were substantial haircuts. Property prices were at some of the lowest points. Deputy Murphy mentioned substantial haircuts; for Irish Nationwide the...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: General Scheme of the Conclusion of IBRC Special Liquidation and Dissolution of NAMA Bill: Department of Finance (18 Sep 2024)

Pearse Doherty: Let us do a counterfactual in relation to the assets underpinning those loans, which NAMA was asked to manage. It is in the title: National Asset - not "fire sale", "sale" or "try to find a floor in the property market" but "Management" - Agency. Property prices have increased since 2011 by 127%. I was in the Seanad at the time of the legislation and a report came out showing property...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: General Scheme of the Conclusion of IBRC Special Liquidation and Dissolution of NAMA Bill: Department of Finance (18 Sep 2024)

Pearse Doherty: You can answer it because it is a simple question.