Mark Daly (Fianna Fail)

There are guidelines but do we employ an army of valuers to go around the country trying to value these properties? We cannot give a "one size fits all" valuation because the valuation for undeveloped development land will not be the same for commercial property on Grafton Street but we must come up with some method because we cannot afford to spend millions of euro on valuers' fees and go property by property, house by house, land parcel by land parcel, and development land by development land until we have all these reports.

As Senators Coghlan and MacSharry are aware, auctioneering and valuations is an art form as opposed to a science and if the method is not entirely transparent accusations will be made that we are trying to bail out developers. Labour has said we are baling out the developers, but we are not baling out anybody. As Senator O'Toole pointed out, we are taking over the assets. We will give money in exchange for that but when we realise the value of those assets and we subsequently get money for those, if there is a difference between what we have given the developer or the bank in the first instance and what we have realised, we will claw back the difference from the bank.

The objective is to get NAMA to work properly by giving correct and accurate valuations because we can then get the banks to work properly. In the event that there is a shortfall to the taxpayer in terms of what we initially give the banks, we will make up for that shortfall by going back to the banks and either getting shares, as the Minister pointed out, or realising it in cash.

In a real sense NAMA is a consequence of what happened to the banks, but Labour was against guaranteeing the loans. Labour is against the formation of NAMA. Labour is against everything. It does not appear to be for anything. It is never positive. It talks about job losses but it does not have any plan. All its Members are probably out canvassing because their voting record is fairly poor too, as Senator Coghlan is well aware.

Our main issue is getting the banks to work. They are not working and NAMA is a huge step in the right direction. It is a risk, as Senator O'Toole pointed out. Other countries have taken the risks and have profited, but it takes years. We will not see profit from many of the assets we will acquire in the next 12 months, 24 months or even five years. It might take ten years or more but in that time our banks will be back working and as a result our economy will be back working and we will get our people back to work.