David Norris (Independent)

-----the real action and decision making will be done by the Minister and advisers such as Dr. Peter Bacon. I was unable to attend this morning's meeting but I corresponded a little with Dr. Bacon. I asked him when the idea of setting up NAMA first arose. He said the report was submitted to the Minister on 20 March 2009. I mooted the idea of a somewhat similar agency, the national property management agency, on 10 February 2009. One can note the etymological closeness of the two agencies. I returned to the idea on 5 March and 9 April without attracting any great interest. My proposal was considerably more radical than what is currently being set up. I suggested we need to be much more radical. We need to be less obsessed with the market. The Minister of State referred to market forces, as did Professor Ahearne. I will return to that matter.

I am not an economist. Perhaps my ideas are all over the place - I do not know - but in broad outline they might attract some interest and could be considered. My expertise was analysing language. In an article in The Irish Times on 25 April Professor Ahearne referred to the dangers of nationalising banks. A cluster of language occurs in the centre of his article around the word "market". That word appears six times in two short paragraphs. The Minister has a similar swarm but it is not quite as intense. This obsession with the markets is incorrect, in particular because the Government is never prepared to let the market operate anyway. The Government protects the banks against the operation of the markets. The banks are out of the marketplace as they have made a comprehensive balls of it. They invested in the Irish National Insurance Company. There was the Rusnak affair. The banks overcharged clients and defrauded them. They advised clients to take immoral decisions involving tax evasion. The minute the market clamps down, the banks may clamp down on private householders but as sure as blazes they will not be allowed to clamp down on the market because the minute market forces operate, banks are not allowed go to the wall. The biggest mistake the Yanks made was not to let Lehman Brothers go down. We would not have suffered everything we have suffered if they had let it go, yet they paid for it.

I am interested that there is not a single figure from beginning to end in what the Minister of State said. We simply do not know what we are going to pay. In a previous debate I referred to this as flubber, namely, that volatile, uncontrollable green stuff from a film of the same name. The banks seem to be full of it. I was suggesting that the banks be nationalised. The whole lot of them should be nationalised and put into one bank called "The Bank of Ireland". That would solve a certain number of problems. We should not worry about the international market response, because it could not possibly be worse. Our banks are valued at virtually nothing. They have had a huge collapse in their value. What are we rescuing? We own most of them anyway. We should collapse them altogether. We can drain out the toxic assets and put them into a bad bank if we want a second bank.

The Minister of State spoke about an asset management agency approach. We should sequester the tangible assets, by which I mean the land, and manage them in the interests of the people of Ireland. People have recently been stating that property speculators will gang up together and take legal advice, but I say "to hell with them". I do not believe they stand a chance in the courts, although they might waste money. It is always possible to do that. The Constitution may vindicate the rights of private property and we have heard that again with regard to religious orders. Nobody seems to have taken on either of these corrupt institutions, despite the fact that the governing clause deals with the public interest.

Let us send the National Asset Management Agency Bill to the President. We only need two thirds of the Seanad to do so and we can then get it proofed against any challenge by having her refer it to the constitutional court. That will save a lot of money on lawyers' fees. I do not accept that is a difficulty. The Minister of State talks about an asset management agency, but a toxic debt is not an asset.