Sean Barrett (Independent)

I welcome the Minister to the House. None of us wants to be here for this debate. This is a situation we inherited and it has been a disaster for the Irish economy. The conduct of bankers and their friends in the property business has brought this country to its knees, destroyed its international credit and raised unemployment from 4.5% to 14.5%. I am sure the Minister would much prefer to be presenting his plans for the development of the economy rather than having to tidy up the mess that was left as a result of the conduct of the banks and the property sector. I believe he will have the support of the House for all his efforts to do that. It is part of the difficulties we have had over the weekend in trying to persuade the Germans to take an attitude that some of the bank debt should be their responsibility. Having seen what has gone on, they would not touch it with the proverbial barge pole.

The population of the country is furious that the people who did this to the country are still walking around. The number of special needs assistants, the carer's allowance and so on have been cut and it will be four years in September since the rescue of these people and nothing has happened to them. It is a fault of the entire system of governance, perhaps including the Houses of Parliament, that these are still immune from the consequences of the damage they did to this country. There is huge anger among the people about that. I imagine that a sizeable proportion of 40% who voted against the treaty in the referendum last Thursday were annoyed that we have not yet called these institutions, banks and builders to account for what they did.

The Minister mentioned the Comptroller and Auditor General's report and I note a reference on page 11 which links in with Senator Daly's proposal. The report states:

In practice, NAMA has not, to date, disposed of property directly. Property has been disposed of, has been sold either by debtors or by insolvency practitioners. This means that most disposals are not governed by the NAMA Code of Practice for the disposal of bank assets or the Code of Practice for the Governance of State Bodies, both of which require competitive processes when disposals above a certain value are being made.

He said that this embodies commercial confidentiality and so on but commercial confidentiality went out the window with those banks. In saying they are regulated by the Central Bank, for those crucial years, the Central Bank did not regulate the people concerned.

There is a good deal to be said in terms of the McCarthy report on the disposal of State assets in that we conduct these without beauty contests. Going through NAMA is a kind of a beauty context. Colm McCarthy did not quite say, in his inimitable way, that they should be put on them eBay, but the disposal of all the State assets should be as open and as transparent as possible. I would add that we should do this as quickly as possible. The long-term economic value argument in this respect is largely bogus. Some people hope that property prices will pick up while others do not. When one goes to the auction, the two balance each other out and that is the price, as it were. In terms of hoping that things will turn out better and that NAMA will become a development agency, I do not see that happening. We should do this now and get on with the development of this country.

Interestingly, the Comptroller and Auditor General found that we had lost another €5 billion. We acquired assets that had a €74 billion face value, we paid €32 billion for them, which represents a loss in their value of 57% and they have now lost another fifth of their value. The €63 billion bank bailout in the period reviewed by the Comptroller and Auditor General has now become a €68 billion bank bailout for 776 people, 800 borrowers, 12,000 loans and 35,000 properties. Those 776 people have done an enormous amount of damage to this country and they should not be protected in any way. The sooner we dispose of these properties, realise the assets and get on with developing the country, the better, and their disposal should be transparent.

If we sell the ghost estates now, local authorities, sports clubs and people who intend to do good things can buy them. It is an asset to this country to allow property prices to fall. It is only at the behest of the banks that we assumed it was a goal to try to keep property prices up. The sooner they fall, the better and that will precipitate the revival of the Irish economy.

I favour Senator Daly's proposal and the Minister also spoke in favour of transparency. Commercial confidentiality in respect of bankrupt organisations does not seem to me to be a high value we should espouse. We should take these assets away from the people who made such disastrous investment decisions and passed the bill on to the taxpayer and sell them on to somebody else who can help us to develop this country.