Pearse Doherty (Sinn Fein)

Gabhaim buíochas leis an Seanadóir Alex White as ucht a chuid ama a roinnt liom. Cuirim fáilte roimh an Aire Stáit, atá anseo arís chun an cheist tábhachtach seo a phlé. Tá a fhios aige go bhfuil mo phairtí, mar aon le mórchuid de phobal na hÉireann, go hiomlán in éadan moladh an Rialtais chun an eagraíocht úr seo a bhunú. Sílim go ndéanfaidh NAMA dochar do phobal agus eacnamaíocht na hÉireann sa todhchaí.

The Minister of State is well aware of my and my party's position on the NAMA proposal, which has the potential to bankrupt this country. In preparing for the debate I sought the NAMA business plan in the Oireachtas Library. I looked under the political category and the economic category, but could not find it. I finally found it under the fiction category. In reality, this is complete fiction. The first six pages are not too bad but once one gets to page 7 there are numerous references to estimates. This is guesswork on the part of officials from the Department of Finance. There are 32 references to estimates in this document. The Minister of State will find more facts in The Da Vinci Code than in the NAMA business plan.

This guesswork has the potential to cripple the country. One only has to look at the guesswork carried out by Department of Finance officials and the Minister in the past. The predictions for this year's tax take are already €2 billion behind the actual figure. The Department's economic forecasts have been spectacularly wrong in the past year, not once, not twice, three or four times but five times. Economic policy is decided on tax receipts so it is crucial to get the numbers right. In July 2008 the Department forecasted that tax receipts would be down by €3 billion. Two months later it changed the figure to €5 billion and the following month the figures changed again, the Department this time suggesting there would be a deficit of €6.5 billion. Even with all the changes, the forecasts were still nowhere near the final figure of approximately €8 billion. In a short period, five different figures have predicted an increased deficit because the previous estimate was wrong and the shortfall multiplied and multiplied to a higher figure.

This is a bad plan even if the figures are accurate, but we can only imagine how bad it will be if the figures grow as the estimates for tax receipts did. Not only is it fiction, in which the Minister tries to look into the future by gazing into a crystal ball, but the figures are wrong, as are the premisses on which they are based. The property bubble has not bottomed out and prices are still falling. The Government does not acknowledge that fact so its figure for a current value of €47 billion could turn out to be lower. I believe that will be the case and economists such as David McWilliams and Professor Morgan Kelly say prices will continue to fall. While the net worth of these loans may have indeed been €88 billion when they were taken out, the €77 billion identified as the amount borrowed on the projects in question could also prove inaccurate because the dogs on the street know that many developers borrowed the additional money from other banks to make up the full purchase price.