Seanad debates

Tuesday, 17 December 2002

National Development Finance Agency Bill, 2002: Second Stage.

 

I do not understand what this Bill is about. I know the Minister has a problem with borrowing and perhaps he is trying to take it off the balance sheet. However, the initial justification offered of gathering together expertise in an advice centre, as it were, is a reasonable one. If that is all there is to it, I would have no problem supporting it. There are PPP units in individual Departments, although they are probably patchy in terms of experience as is the Minister's experience of them. There is a useful and well resourced unit in the Department of Finance which has been doing good work in dealing with the social partners in putting together a structure over recent years. Are those people to be taken from that Department and put into the new agency? Why is that new agency and its brass plate needed? Why not do this in the context of the NTMA rather than giving it a different corporate structure? Why is it necessary to set up special purpose companies, SPCs, which cause serious concern? Accountability will become diffuse and may get lost altogether.

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