David Norris (Independent)

I support the calls for a discussion on NAMA. It is extremely worrying that Dr. Michael Somers has said he does not know how it will work. He does not appear to have the staff or resources to deal with the role and appears to be pleading ignorance about it. That is very worrying from the person supposed to run NAMA. I would welcome the opportunity to talk on the issue because, on 10 February 2009, as the record will show, I suggested and gave some details of a proposed property management agency similar to NAMA. It took the Government six weeks to catch up, but it seems to be getting it backwards and wrong.

We need to be radical and nationalise the banks into one bank of Ireland and create the national property management agency to manage the property resources in the interest of the people. I explained how that could be dealt with and how any constitutional impediment could be overcome. However, now I hear it being said the situation will create a goldmine for lawyers. That is rubbish. Are the people in control of the State not aware we have an instrument in Seanad Éireann whereby two thirds of the Members can pass a resolution referring this to the President, who can refer it to the Supreme Court so that it is proof? Lawyers would then be wasting their time taking cases.

The Adoption Bill is important legislation and many of us, including Senators Fitzgerald, Bacik and myself, have worked hard on it. I do not agree with the trenchant criticism of the Minister of State, Deputy Barry Andrews. I read what he said very carefully. He was circumspect in the Dáil, but he indicated the areas of his concern and the reason he was taking this Bill. He is displaying a cautious attitude. I do not see anything that he said in response to a query from The Irish Times that is substantially different or that provides substantial further information to what he put on the record here. Carol Coulter is a very fine writer and expanded much further, but what she wrote were her views. She pointed to the fact that both the United States and Sweden had also suspended relations because of the same kind of worries. Therefore, we cannot blame the Minister of State on that, although we might blame him for other things.

There has been a campaign of people writing to Members. I got 200 e-mails. I replied by circular to these e-mails, some of which were individual e-mails. Most people replied politely and positively, but I received some very vicious and threatening e-mails I do not appreciate at all. Nobody will get me on their side through this kind of bullying. When I said in my reply my secretary spent an inordinate amount of time dealing with the e-mails, I got a reply from a person in Montenotte saying "Good luck to your secretary who will be kept busy for the foreseeable future answering all letters and e-mails." This is an abuse. People like that discredit their own campaigns. I wrote back and said my secretary would not be kept busy for the foreseeable future because she had received instructions from me that all such correspondence should go straight, unanswered into the bin.