Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for coming to the House. I support the establishment of the commission of investigation, although I share some of the concerns expressed by others. It was very unfortunate that the report produced by the Comptroller and Auditor General which was clear was challenged in the way it was by a Minister and the Government. The Committee of Public Accounts also produced a very substantial report. While a commission is necessary to move to a situation where blame can be apportioned and concrete actions taken as a result of its work, we have to consider that time is passing. We are concerned that in the past ten weeks NAMA has sold another tranche of loans worth €2.5 billion. We know about Project Gem. We also know that large-scale sales of assets are happening under the same regime that surrounded Project Eagle and that they are proceeding apace. In the interim period, before June next year, how much of the remaining asset portfolio of the State will be disposed of?There is a question as to whether there should be a suspension of sales or, at the very minimum, a new regime of transparency associated with sales.

Some of the elements of the terms of reference which I welcome include the fact that the commission of investigation will look at the question of whether both the timing of the sale and the disposal of the loans as a single portfolio were appropriate. There is a question around the NAMA practice of the large-scale bundling of portfolios and loans as sales, whether that is the most effective and appropriate way to dispose of these assets and whether it delivers the best and most meaningful return to the State.

The question of the social dividend has already been referred to by colleagues and in that context, there is a problem with the way in which NAMA was set up. We had a great opportunity, when enormous amounts of property and other assets were transferred effectively into State control, to extract a social dividend but NAMA seems to have had a mandate simply to turn the assets around and get what it could from them over a period of time. Time was a driver in this and there is no sense that an adequate timescale was allowed to realise the best return. There are also questions around whether the social dividend might have been better, in terms, for example, of the role NAMA could and should have played in addressing our housing crisis. The manner of the setting up of NAMA meant that, coming out of a huge property bubble and crash, we again tied ourselves into a speculative model of property inflation.

However, NAMA has not been operating in a bubble over the last two or three years. We have seen policies, such as the capital gains tax waiver, which have led to huge floods of vulture fund purchases. Such funds were effectively invited in. We have seen NAMA's assets turning over at a rapid rate to those capital rich vulture funds, attracted by massive tax incentives. We only need look to the sales figures and how they changed and jumped between 2012 and 2014 to see that. We must ask whether this was the best method to yield the best return and whether it was the best long-term strategic plan, not just for the cash profit that the State makes but also in terms of planning for our population and for a sustainable society with a sustainable property market that is not purely speculative. We see again commercial property continuing to be inflated and presumably that will be the case until it has been fully disposed of.

If NAMA has lost €190 million on the €4.5 billion Project Eagle transaction, how much has it lost on the €1.75 billion published since then? If it is a similar proportion, then the money spent on the commission will represent good value if it concretely contributes to us not having similar losses on the sales that are being made. Unfortunately, however, we have not seen any signal from the Government that it intends to ask NAMA to approach sales in a different way or that there will be greater rigour.

I appreciate that the terms of reference include a caveat regarding confidentiality and commercial sensitivity, namely that they will only be respected where they are not incompatible with the public interest. Again, the opportunity to have freedom of information provisions available from the very start is an issue that can be examined. What are the Minister of State's views on freedom of information in areas where it does not currently apply because of commercial sensitivity? Will there be a change of approach in that regard, whereby we ensure far greater freedom of information access and transparency, even in areas where there is commercial sensitivity?

In 2014 the directors of NAMA came to the House and spoke about the €11 million which NAMA paid per year to 134 developers to manage their own portfolios. There are huge questions surrounding that. Section 4 of the terms of reference provides that the commission may also take up other issues which arise in the investigation. We may need to examine the appropriateness, procedurally, of having 134 developers who had gone into NAMA with debt, being paid €11 million by the State to manage their own assets at a time when home owners certainly did not have the luxury of buying down their own mortgage debt. The latter had to watch their debt being sold to vultures above them. There is public anger that those who caused or drove the property crash, which required around €40 billion of taxpayers' money, were living on wages of between €70,000 and €100,000. Those who had property portfolios, who declared themselves bankrupt, who went away for a year or two and then returned are somehow millionaires again, as if by magic. We have seen how wealth disappeared and was regenerated while the general public carried the debt. We have seen the Quinns living on allowances which are 100 times beyond what the general population enjoys and we have seen the acquittal of Mr. Sean Fitzpatrick. There are so many procedural issues there, including the idea that in a white collar area, we do statements by committee as opposed to statements to the police. We have seen the shredding of documents. In that context, I again ask the Minister of State if there will be a new approach. We have seen a litany of incidents of the cutting, pasting and shredding of documents. There needs to be seriousness around white collar crime and there needs to be consequences. Interim action must be taken in the coming months, before the conclusion of this commission in June 2018, to demonstrate that we are taking a new approach. We have enough evidence now to know that we need to change our approach. I would like the Minister of State to outline what will be done in the immediate future in that regard.