Joe O'Toole (Independent)

I second the amendment. This is a core part of what the Bill is about, namely, giving a balance in the form of a community add-on facility and a sense of ownership among ordinary people and communities.

In the Minister's absence last night I had tabled another amendment to the legislation and to the section where it says that NAMA may "distribute assets in specie to the Minister". I added a very generalised non-binding amendment with levels of choices within it. The words, as I recall were to the effect of facilitating, inter alia, the transfer of assets to the community. I only tabled it to establish what was meant because this single line that NAMA would "distribute assets in specie to the Minister" was puzzling. It was there on its own and as such allowed the transfer of finished or unfinished assets, fields, half-built buildings or whatever to the Minister. I could not find the reason for it anywhere in the legislation, and it was there from the very beginning. I had looked at the early part of the legislation in section 2, which deals with the objectives and purposes of NAMA and had assumed the line was included to allow for the insertion of section 2(b)(viii), which was added on Report Stage in the Dáil and which says: "to contribute to the social and economic development of the State", but it was there from the beginning. We need to know what was intended in tabling this.

We were doing all right in terms of the debate, Senator MacSharry was giving me a half-reasonable explanation and then the Minister, Deputy O'Dea, got involved. He started to change position and began to duck and dive and weave. I was less informed at the end of the debate than at the beginning. I told the Minister I would read the Official Report to see whether I could come up with something different for Report Stage today.

In the meantime my colleague, Senator Mullen, said he was tabling this amendment. While I am not exactly enthusiastic about Senator Mullen's form of words, he and I have an agreement on what we are trying to achieve.