Marc MacSharry (Fianna Fail)

I welcome the Minister and pay a personal tribute to the great effort he has been making in the past year to overcome unprecedented difficulties. I am sure it has been quite a substantial sacrifice for him and his family. I thank him for his efforts, his enthusiasm and his determination to find the appropriate solution to these problems.

I am a fan of NAMA. Anybody in this House over the past year would know that. Before it emerged that we were going to go down the route of the asset management route, I had been calling in this House for us to look at what the Americans might call an aggregator bank where we would pool the toxic debt, centrally manage it and try to work through it. As a concept, I am a fan of NAMA. We have the appropriate template from which we can rebuild our financial system, rehabilitate it, and achieve our primary goal of getting credit flowing to help viable business to continue, encourage new businesses to start and get much needed credit to families throughout Ireland.

Senator Twomey was extremely constructive in his debate, as was Senator Cummins in the main. However, I always have an issue when I hear about how we on this side of the House got the country into the mess exclusively, and it was all about bankers, developers and tents in Galway. All of this rubbish is tedious and tiring in the extreme.