2026-05-20

I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time." I am pleased to introduce, on behalf of the Tánaiste, Second Stage of the National Treasury Management Agency (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2026. The legislation marks an important step in bringing the National Asset Management Agency, NAMA, and the special liquidation of the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation, IBRC, to a close. It provides for the transfer and consolidation of the remaining activities of both NAMA and the special liquidation of the IBRC within the National Treasury Management Agency, NTMA, thereby ensuring continuity and legal certainty for all parties and enabling the orderly wind-down and dissolution of both entities. To give effect to this, the Bill provides for the dissolution of NAMA on an appointed dissolution day. On that day, any remaining NAMA activities will transfer to the NTMA. The Bill also provides for the transfer of residual matters from the IBRC in special liquidation to the NTMA. This will take place by way of a ministerial direction and a transfer agreement to be entered into by the special liquidators of the IBRC and the NTMA. Once that transfer has taken place, the special liquidators will finalise the liquidation of the IBRC in line with their obligations under company law, including the dissolution of remaining IBRC subsidiaries and the resolution of any outstanding administrative and tax matters. In order to ensure the NTMA can manage this combined residual activity effectively, the Bill also confers on the NTMA the necessary functions and powers to undertake that work. Taken together, these measures mark an important milestone in bringing to a conclusion two interventions that were central to stabilising the financial system and protecting the wider economy following the global financial crisis. Since then, both NAMA and the IBRC special liquidators have worked through complex portfolios and litigation. The Bill reflects that the very substantial work of both is now largely complete. While recognising the challenges of the period that led to these interventions, it is also important to acknowledge the substantial and diligent work carried out by NAMA and the special liquidators in the interests of the State. Therefore, before turning to the detail of the legislation, I will outline the extensive work undertaken over many years by both NAMA and the IBRC special liquidators. NAMA was established in 2009 as part of the State's response to the financial crisis. It acquired loans with a par value of €74 billion for a consideration of €31.8 billion, including €5.6 billion of State aid to the five participating financial institutions. The value of the residual portfolio to transfer to the NTMA is projected to be less than €25 million. That demonstrates the progress of NAMA in resolving its acquired portfolio. Over its lifetime, NAMA has delivered significant outcomes for the State. They include the redemption of €30.2 billion in senior debt in 2017, three years ahead of schedule, thereby eliminating a major contingent liability for the State; the full repayment of its €1.6 billion in subordinated debt by 2020, leaving the agency fully debt free; a lifetime contribution of €5.6 billion to the Exchequer, comprising €4.7 billion in cash, more than €450 million in corporation tax and the transfer of assets valued at €425 million to the Land Development Agency, LDA, for retention in State ownership; facilitating the delivery of more than 44,500 homes, including approximately 3,000 social homes; the regeneration of the Dublin Docklands strategic development zone, SDZ, supporting the delivery of over 4.2 million sq. ft of commercial space and more than 2,000 homes; and the transfer to the LDA of the National Asset Residential Property Service, NARPS, portfolio of social homes, as well as two large development sites, which the LDA believes can deliver more than 7,000 homes. Throughout its life, NAMA has operated within a strong statutory, governance and accountability framework. From a peak of 369 staff, it is now expected that just eight staff members will be required within the NTMA to manage the remaining residual activity to completion. NAMA is widely recognised internationally as one of the most successful State-backed asset management agencies established in response to the global financial crisis. It played a key role in restoring confidence in the Irish economy. The Irish Bank Resolution Corporation was placed into special liquidation on 7 February 2013. At inception, the special liquidators were tasked with realising a loan portfolio valued at €21 billion, comprising more than 15,000 borrower groups and collateral spread across 22 jurisdictions. The scale and complexity of this liquidation were unprecedented in the State's history. Since then, the special liquidators have disposed of all assets; resolved the overwhelming majority of borrower relationships, asset disposals and cross-border legal issues; paid all unsecured creditors in full, including interest, in respect of amounts owed at the date of liquidation; returned approximately €1.7 billion to the State in respect of its claims and related holdings; delivered €470 million in distributions to the Exchequer, with further distributions expected prior to its final dissolution; and progressed the liquidation to its final stage, with only residual litigation and associated loan matters remaining. As with any liquidation of this scale, it is normal and expected that certain matters, particularly litigation, continue for some time beyond the active disposal phase. The NTMA is now ready to assume responsibility for this final phase. The agency has engaged closely with NAMA, the special liquidators and the Department of Finance as it prepares for the transfer of responsibilities. I acknowledge the contribution of NAMA, the NTMA and the special liquidators of IBRC in reaching this point. In particular, I recognise the leadership team in NAMA and the special liquidators. I also thank the Office of the Attorney General, the Office of the Revenue Commissioners, the Data Protection Commission, the European Commission and officials across government for the detailed work undertaken throughout the drafting process. I will now move to the text of the Bill. As already set out, this Bill has three objectives, namely, to dissolve the National Asset Management Agency and transfer all of its remaining assets, liabilities, rights, obligations, records and causes of action to the NTMA; to enable the transfer of residual matters of the IBRC special liquidation to the NTMA, or a subsidiary of it, by way of a ministerial direction and transfer agreement; and to confer upon the NTMA the functions necessary to manage these combined residual matters to completion. The Bill also repeals the NAMA Act 2009, amends the NTMA Act 2014 and the IBRC Act 2013, and makes consequential amendments across multiple enactments and statutory instruments. The Bill is divided into four Parts with 54 sections in total, and includes three Schedules. Part 1, preliminary and general, is comprised of sections 1 to 5, inclusive. These sections provide for standard legislative matters, including the Short Title, commencement provisions, interpretation, expenses, repeals and revocations. Part 2 is comprised of sections 6 to 16, inclusive, and provides for the dissolution of NAMA and the transfer of residual matters to the NTMA. Section 6 defines key terms for the purposes of this Part. Section 7 provides that the Minister for Finance will appoint a day to be the dissolution day of NAMA. Section 8 provides that NAMA shall stand dissolved on the dissolution day. Sections 9 to 12, inclusive, provide that all lands, property, rights and liabilities of NAMA shall be vested in the NTMA, the continuation of contracts and that all records held by NAMA are transferred to the NTMA. Section 13 provides that any claim arising from NAMA's performance of its functions prior to the dissolution day will lie against the NTMA and that the NTMA is substituted for NAMA in any legal proceedings. Section 14 provides that anything commenced and not completed by NAMA can be carried on by the NTMA. Section 15 provides for the preservation of any indemnity previously granted under section 34 of the NAMA Act 2009. Section 16 provides for the final accounts and final annual report of NAMA to be completed by the NTMA. Part 3 covers sections 17 to 20, inclusive, of the Bill. It amends the IBRC Act 2013 by inserting new sections 11A to 11D into that Act. Taken together, these sections provide for the Minister to direct the special liquidators and the NTMA to enter into a transfer agreement to transfer residual matters from the IBRC special liquidation to the NTMA. They also provide for the substitution of the NTMA in any proceedings transferred from the IBRC special liquidation to the NTMA. Where proceedings outside of the State are transferred, the transfer takes effect from the date that the relevant legal requirements in the jurisdiction concerned have been satisfied. These provisions also ensure the continuity of contracts relating to the residual matters transferred. Following the transfer of residual matters, the special liquidators will finalise the winding up of any remaining IBRC subsidiaries, complete any remaining administrative matters and take the steps required to complete the winding up of the IBRC and have it dissolved under company law. Turning now to Part 4, this Part amends the NTMA Act 2014 and provides the National Treasury Management Agency with the powers and functions it will need to manage the limited residual matters that will transfer from NAMA and the IBRC special liquidation. It does so by inserting a new Part 6A into the NTMA Act 2014. This Part is divided into 12 Chapters covering sections 49C to 49AD, inclusive, and I will briefly take the House through the purpose of these provisions. Chapter 1 relates to the functions of the NTMA in relation to the residual matters transferred from NAMA and from the IBRC special liquidation. This includes key definitions which were relied upon in the NAMA Act 2009 and are to be preserved, such as associated debtor, bank asset, credit facility and participating institution. Section 49C sets out the NTMA's functions in relation to managing the residual activity transferred. These functions mirror NAMA's former functions and powers only to the extent necessary to complete remaining tasks. This includes that the NTMA shall take all steps necessary to protect, enhance or realise the value of the bank assets transferred. This section also provides that the NTMA may have the powers necessary for the performance of its functions under this Part of the NTMA Act. This means that the additional functions and powers provided to the NTMA to manage residual activity apply only to the management of the activity transferred from NAMA and the IBRC special liquidation and cannot be used by the NTMA for the performance of the functions of the agency more broadly. The remaining provisions in Part 4 also address a number of key matters necessary to support the effective management of these residual activities. Section 49D provides that the NTMA may return surplus funds to the Central Fund or transfer assets to the Minister. Section 49E clarifies that the Minister, directors, the chief executive, staff and agents of the NTMA will not be considered shadow or de facto directors of any participating institution, debtor, associated debtor or guarantor when performing functions under this Part. In relation to participating institutions, sections 49F to 49I, inclusive, provide that the NTMA may require the provision of books, records and information relating to transferred bank assets, including recourse to the High Court where necessary. These provisions also ensure that the NTMA assumes the rights and obligations of participating institutions in relation to those assets, subject to certain limitations, and is not liable for any wrongs committed prior to their acquisition by NAMA. Sections 49J to 49M, inclusive, provide for the preservation of existing rights and obligations attaching to bank assets, ensuring that contractual terms remain unchanged following transfer, while facilitating practical measures such as exempting the registration requirements in respect of security and certification of ownership of assets. Sections 49N to 49P, inclusive, confer the necessary powers on the NTMA to manage and dispose of relevant assets, including the ability to offset amounts owed against debts arising in connection with NAMA bank assets. Section 49Q provides that no cause of action arises solely by reason of the transfer of these residual matters to the NTMA. Sections 49R to 49T, inclusive, deal with legal proceedings, including the continuation of proceedings involving transferred assets, the provision of assistance by participating institutions and provisions to support the enforcement of debts. Sections 49U to 49Y, inclusive, provide for the appropriate use and disclosure of information necessary for the management of these assets, ensuring that such disclosures do not breach confidentiality obligations and remain subject to data protection law. Finally, sections 49Z to 49AD, inclusive, include a number of important supporting provisions, including those relating to payments to relevant persons; clarification that the NTMA is not deemed to be carrying on regulated banking business; powers of access to Land Registry documentation; interpretative provisions in respect of the Companies Act 2014; and offence provisions in respect of the provision of false or misleading information. The Bill also comprises three Schedules. Schedule 1 provides for a list of instruments to be repealed and revoked, as required, to update the Irish Statute Book following the dissolution of NAMA and amendment of the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation Act 2013. Schedule 2 provides for a list of instruments to be amended to remove redundant provisions and to update instruments where required. Schedule 3 provides for the amendment of statutory instruments. NAMA and the IBRC special liquidator have now substantially completed their mandates and are reaching the final stages of their life cycle. In that context, it is appropriate that any remaining matters, particularly litigation, are managed within a streamlined structure. This Bill provides a practical approach to achieving this, while ensuring continuity and legal certainty for all parties and preserving existing rights and obligations. The NTMA is well placed to take on this role. It has the governance, experience and expertise required to manage complex financial and legal matters to completion while avoiding the cost and duplication of maintaining separate structures that are no longer required given the reduced scale of the remaining activity. This Bill represents a significant step in the State's post-crisis normalisation. It acknowledges the substantial work carried out by NAMA and the special liquidators of the IBRC and provides a clear and efficient structure to bring the remaining matters to completion. I commend the Bill to the House.

Sinn Féin will not oppose this legislation progressing to the next Stage. We support the orderly winding down of NAMA and the completion of the IBRC process, but we have serious concerns about accountability, governance and the extraordinary salaries that will be paid, which are utterly out of kilter with public sector norms. Sinn Féin will bring forward amendments on Committee Stage to address those concerns. Before we close the book on NAMA as a State, a people and a Government, serious questions have to be answered. Under the Government's plans, the CEO of NAMA, Brendan McDonagh, appears set to transfer into the NTMA on the same terms and conditions he currently enjoys. We are talking about a salary of approximately €430,000 per year. That places him among the top 0.1% of earners in the State. It is more than €100,000 higher than the salary of the Governor of the Central Bank. Last year, the Government even attempted to appoint this same individual as a so-called housing tsar, effectively sidelining the Minister for housing, before backing down under sustained pressure from this side of the House. Therefore, the public is entitled to ask whether there are any lengths to which the Government will not go to protect Mr. McDonagh's extraordinary salary package. The Government continues to bend over backwards to protect the NAMA CEO's salary of €430,000 per year. Last year-----

I hate to interrupt, but the Deputy cannot bring something like that up with regard to a Civil Service salary.

This is an extraordinary salary that is part and parcel of the winding up of a State agency.

That may be, but the Deputy has to have consideration for the fact that the individual in question is not here to defend himself. I ask the Deputy to be cautious.

I will continue with that noted. Last year, the so-called housing tsar plan collapsed under pressure and now the Government wants to fold an individual back into the NTMA while preserving the same extraordinary pay package. Contrast that for a moment with the National Ambulance Service workers who have been forced onto picket lines simply to secure modest improvements in pay and conditions and address chronic recruitment and retention problems. Front-line workers are told there is no flexibility, no urgency and no money, but when it comes to protecting a senior executive associated with NAMA, or any senior executive, suddenly the State can move mountains and seems very motivated to do so. We also need to be honest about what NAMA represents and the political choices that followed the collapse. The Government will try to present this Bill as the final chapter in a successful rescue story, but the story of NAMA is inseparable from one of the darkest economic periods in the history of the State. Following the crash in 2008, the State undertook extraordinary measures to stabilise the banking system. Banks were recapitalised at massive public expense. Blanket guarantees were introduced and NAMA was established to acquire toxic property loans from the banks. The stated purpose of NAMA was to protect the interests of the State and manage distressed assets in a way that maximised public value, but when we examine the legacy of NAMA honestly, serious questions remain. NAMA paid €31.8 billion to acquire loans with a face value of more than €74 billion. The banks incurred losses of more than €42 billion on those loans, losses that were ultimately borne by ordinary people through austerity, including cuts to services, higher taxes, emigration and lost opportunity. The Comptroller and Auditor General estimated in 2022 that the net cost of the bank stabilisation measures amounted to €45.7 billion. Nowhere is the failure of the post-crash political and economic model clearer than in housing. While NAMA was established to manage distressed property assets, what followed was the large-scale transfer of Irish property into the hands of international vulture funds and institutional landlords. Entire developments of apartment blocks and offices and land banks were sold off at rock bottom prices. These were assets that could have been strategically retained for long-term public housing, instead of becoming investment vehicles for global finance. The legacy of NAMA and austerity and the economic ideology of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are still visible across every community in the State. Following the crash, Irish property and land banks were sold at rock bottom prices to vulture funds and institutional investors while ordinary people carried the burden. Today we are living with the consequences, including record numbers of evictions, the highest homelessness figures in the history of the State, eye-watering rents, families trapped in insecure accommodation, workers commuting impossible distances and an entire generation effectively locked out of home ownership. Coincidentally, the same generation in many cases bore the brunt of the economic crisis and the decisions taken by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael in its aftermath. When we examine the financial returns achieved by NAMA, the picture becomes even harder to justify. NAMA was handed billions in property assets at the absolute bottom of the market following the crash. Property values subsequently recovered dramatically, yet NAMA's projected surplus to the State amounts to approximately €5.2 billion, including corporation tax paid. Against the backdrop of a bailout that cost the State tens of billions, those returns are remarkably modest. The reality is that many assets were sold too cheaply and too quickly. Rather than retaining strategic assets for public development or managing them over the longer term for the benefit of the State, vast quantities were transferred into private hands. Similar mistakes have been repeated elsewhere. AIB shares were sold at prices that deprived the State of billions in potential value. Now we see the same approach with Permanent TSB. Time and again, the State socialises losses and privatises gains. The Bill closes an institutional chapter, but it does not close the political and economic questions arising from that period. The central lesson of the crash is that the Government made political choices about who would bear the cost of economic failure. The people who paid the price for the banking collapse were not the speculators, banks or international investors. Ordinary workers paid the price. Communities paid the price. Young people paid the price through emigration, unemployment, unaffordable housing and lost opportunities. Nearly 20 years later, many are still paying through huge rents, underfunded public services and deep inequality. As we debate the winding up of NAMA, we should not allow anyone to sanitise or rewrite what happened during that period or minimise the hardship imposed on so many people across the State. For our part, Sinn Féin will engage constructively on the Bill. We support the orderly winding down of NAMA and the completion of the IBRC process, but we will continue to demand accountability for the failure of the banking collapse and the deeply damaging and flawed political choices that followed it.

I want to be clear. I am not interrupting speeches. It is just that when there is an allegation made against someone who is not a Member of the House but a private citizen, we must be cautious and understand that they are not here to defend themselves.

I welcome the Bill to facilitate the orderly wind-up of NAMA and the IBRC, an end of sorts, in part, to the contemptible chapter of history, which saw Irish taxpayers bail out the banks in a process that was quite poor in terms of the return for the Irish people. In many cases, these assets were captured by vulture funds at rock bottom prices. The full truth of Project Eagle and other projects may never be known. Given that NAMA was handed a portfolio of property assets at the bottom of the market and against a backdrop of having seen complete market recovery and a deepening housing crisis, it sticks in the back of people's throats. It is difficult to understand and hard to dismiss how a cynical person might view the outworkings of NAMA. As I have said, this is an end of sorts but only in part. The conclusion of the work of NAMA and the IBRC is not the end for the taxpayer or many Irish generations to come. The Government may try to portray this as a success, but the fact of the matter is that this was a core component of the Government's overall bank bailout, a bailout for which the Comptroller and Auditor General put the net cost at €45.7 billion. NAMA achieved a meagre €5.2 billion return on €32 billion in assets when the market was at its very bottom. The same principle holds for the State sale of AIB and PTSB shares, which were sold on the cheap and cost the State billions. The Government is not just failing in terms of public services; its management of State assets is woeful. In terms of the practicalities of the wind-up, one that was recently considered by the Committee of Public Accounts, of which I am a part, relates to the former CEO of NAMA who returns to the NTMA on the same terms and conditions he is currently on. We were told last week in a committee meeting that he will return with a salary of €430,000. That does not seem right. There is no vacancy for a CEO, as far as I am concerned, in the NTMA. Perhaps the Minister of State could fill in the blanks. Why is a job in the NTMA being offered to the former CEO of NAMA? We would like clarity on that. NTMA officials are among the most highly paid in the Civil Service. We are told this is necessitated by their expertise and that they receive bonuses when most in the Civil Service or public service do not. We know that only a few years ago the NTMA spent €51,000 on two parties for staff. As I said last week in the Committee of Public Accounts, it is a great place to work. It seems the jobs in NTMA are among the best in the country, with the remuneration of the private sector and all of the benefits of the Civil Service.

The Bill involves the winding up and dissolution of NAMA and bringing the sad story of the IBRC to an end. Nobody will be particularly unhappy about ending this part of Irish history. Nobody can look back to the circumstances that led to this in a positive manner. It is very difficult to look at NAMA, the bank bailout and the entire sorry story without seeing it as being open business for institutional investors and vulture funds and the people who had to pay were the Irish people. I remember the onset of the financial crisis when we went from day to day, week to week and month to month. It was a time and place when people made a detailed study of budgets and how every austerity move would have an impact on them, their lives, their family and their wider community. Nobody knew how we would get out of that set of circumstances. Unfortunately, as always happens, the normal, regular people of Ireland did the heavy lifting. In general, those who caused the problem got off scot-free. What are we talking about? We are talking about a bank bailout and all of the stabilisation measures, which resulted in a net cost of €45.7 billion. Over €5.2 billion was the return on the assets sold by NAMA. Let us be clear. Everything was sold quickly and in a dirty manner. Those outside forces with the money and resources were welcomed in by Governments and able to make an absolute killing. The unfortunate thing was that the people of Ireland had to pay the price and continue to do so. There have been impacts, and not only on individuals, such as those on certain disability payments or whatever else that were cut. Anybody involved in the community sector knows it was hollowed out. Funding for mental health addiction and drug addiction services have never returned to where it was before 2008. That is the reality. The Government wants to say this was a well executed operation, that it is all over and there is nothing to see here, but the fact is that the people were absolutely screwed and the impact is still being felt. That is why we try to keep the pressure on. It is all well and good talking about services of €9 billion and all of the rest, but people out there feel they are being absolutely hammered. The resources of the State, which could be used to provide some element of mitigation, are not coming through. Land, assets and infrastructure were sold off at a pittance. Action was taken by government that reinforced, through austerity, the circumstances that created a detrimental economic impact across the board. We had no building of houses or plan by government. We went from a situation where the market would sort everything, where all was going well and where we had the Celtic tiger situation, when the Government had moved away from building houses, to a situation where all the moneys dried up. The only people who were facilitated were the vulture funds. We have ended up in a scenario where we have the most dysfunctional housing market in the world. We saw the Daft report and what we expected to happen in relation to the Government's removal of whatever protections were provided. What have we ended up with now? We have ended up with rents that are absolutely through the roof and where people cannot afford to buy or to rent houses. If people are on a social housing list, they are waiting for years. This is the circumstance we have been dealing with in real terms from that period of 2008. The Government's attempts to solve this problem was literally to sell off the family goods at rock bottom prices. As I said, we facilitated a huge number of people in making a huge amount of money and, to a greater degree, we facilitated the Irish people in taking all the pain. We are not in a better circumstance now. Government members will talk about the wonders of FDI, and that is not taking into account the present issues and global instability. They will talk about how they maintain the economy but the fact is the economy is not working for a large number of people. We can talk about surpluses and full employment but we have a huge number of people who may be employed in a job that previously would have given them and their families security and it does not at this point. It does not give them any element of security. The Minister of State knows better than others the huge impact it had on politics. It was a breach of trust, particularly for the Minister of State's party, with a huge section of the Irish people. Unfortunately, that has had an impact across the board, in that at times people do not see any solution that politics can provide. At times, because people cannot see a solution, they look in places they never would have considered before. We need to ensure we can offer them something much better and some element of hope of a better life - a life where they can afford the rent and a world where they can buy a house and work one job and not have to work three or four jobs. People used to give out about in the American system. The American dream does not work for most American people. We have almost created an Irish nightmare that is very similar. In terms of the bank bailout, NAMA, IBRC, the history of Anglo Irish Bank and all of it, we are still paying for it now. I will reiterate what my colleagues said. It is good enough that a position, with a salary of €430,000, can literally be found for the chief executive officer of NAMA in the NTMA. I and many others would need some element of explanation for that. I do not think any of this is good enough. The only thing I am happy about is that we are bringing this to an end. We are bringing what was a huge crime carried out against the Irish people to an end but we cannot forget the fact there was a huge-----

I thank the Deputy. You are over time. You know you were sharing.

There was a huge cost. Just let-----

Please, Deputy. Deputy Nash is next.

Okay.

I thank the Ceann Comhairle. At least I am keeping it in the county. It is a seamless transition. I am pleased to speak on this Bill. While the Bill's provisions are mostly technical and procedural in nature, the import of NAMA and the IBRC, the history attached to these institutions, and their purpose, certainly were not and are not. Seventeen years on from its controversial establishment, NAMA is today being given a decent burial. Thirteen years on from the effect of tearing up the IBRC promissory notes, this zombie bank is being liquidated. On balance, this is a milestone; this is a good thing. It is important today that we reflect on why these institutions were set up in the first place and on how they were managed. We also need to reflect on the lessons that need to be learned to ensure the citizens of this country are never again saddled with the debts and long-term consequences of the actions of a class of developers who flew too close to the sun egged on by a political elite of enablers, out of control bankers who funded the developers' misadventures and, indeed, the actions of unquestioning regulators who got far too close to them all. Irresponsible frenzies of tax cutting coupled with over-spending, allied with an over-reliance on one or two unreliable tax heads to fund the madness that commenced at the start of the 2000s led directly to the economic collapse and an impact on our society and political system that is still spinning out. We still cannot say with any certainty that the outworkings of that catastrophe have in any way concluded. There are lessons here for the way in which our economy is managed today and into the future. While I do not want to exaggerate, there are worrying signs that all the lessons of the disaster that kicked off in earnest only 18 to 19 years ago have not been fully understood. The shadow of the crash still looms; most notably in a dysfunctional housing and construction sector that still has not fully recovered. We see the impact of this every single day. There are more than 17,000 people homeless in what is now, objectively, a rich country. Annual housing targets are routinely unmet. Housing is out of the reach of far too many working class people. There is the smashing of the social contract that urgently needs to be pieced back together. NAMA, in terms of the legislation governing its work and the priorities laid down by successive Governments, has one would argue done a good job on what it was asked and required to do. On its own terms, that is what it would say. It has handed more than €5.6 billion in terms of a lifetime contribution to the State. I recall only too well when NAMA was set up in 2009 the fear the taxpayer would ultimately have to keep bailing out the agency, an agency that it is worth recalling took over, as the Minister of State stated, €74 billion of distressed assets at less than half that initial valuation. That was a genuine fear. That was an insight into the fairly legitimate sense of catastrophe and fatalism that abounded at the time as the country crept towards the bailout signed up to in 2010. I will not go into the details here but we were all critical at the time of the risk of fire sales of assets that, in effect, belonged to the taxpayer. I remember a lot of the NAMA exposure originally was in the UK and that market recovered more quickly than property values and the market in Ireland. It was there that NAMA did much of its early substantial transactions and later as the property market improved in Ireland, as property values rose, more of NAMA's work was focused here in the domestic market. At the pre-legislative scrutiny of this Bill, NAMA defended itself and pointed to independent assessments of its work, and I accept that. To a degree, one's position on whether or not greater value might have been achieved by selling portfolios and properties later than they were sold is a subjective position. I absolutely understand that. Positions tend to be taken on these kinds of matters with the benefit of hindsight. I do acknowledge the independent assessments that have taken place of the performance of NAMA. Would the Minister of State take it on board the following in the context of the Committee and Report Stages of the Bill? One of the recommendations made by the committee in the context of our assessment at pre-legislative scrutiny stage was that a further independent assessment of the performance of NAMA would take place, with the benefit of hindsight and as the dust is settling on that era, if I can use that term. That is something the Minister might consider whether by way of inserting a provision into the primary legislation or, indeed, by the way of regulation requiring NAMA, or the NTMA as it will be responsible for NAMA. That is something that should be considered. It is good to see, and the Minister put it on the record, that there are residuals of around €25 million only that would be transferred from NAMA to the NTMA. That is a good thing. Regarding the IBRC, while the story of that tumultuous time is yet to be written and fully comprehended, we should remember the significance of the bank bailout and the path it led us on as a country. The IBRC was the zombie bank that was managing the remnants of Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide Building Society - institutions that will go down in infamy in this country and, indeed, internationally. It was just 13 years ago when the promissory notes were torn up and significant steps were made to get the proverbial monkey off the backs of the Irish people and their economy. That in itself was a not insignificant landmark on our road to recovery. Turning to the Bill and the recommendations made by the committee in terms of pre-legislative scrutiny, I made the point about that independent assessment of NAMA. That would be very important from the point of view of accountability and transparency and that is something that should be considered. The committee also recommends that Minister for Finance seek quarterly reports from the liquidators of the residual assets following the dissolution of NAMA that would detail the outstanding liabilities and expected timeframes for recovery and that the committee would be provided with same. Again, I am not necessarily persuaded that this needs to be placed in primary legislation but if the Minister by way of regulation or through other means would make a commitment that this would happen, that would attract the support of committee members and all members of the Opposition. It is also worth noting that the committee did recommend that the NTMA should publish a note in its final accounts to detail NAMA's specific liabilities once NAMA is dissolved. That will enable us to keep track of progress in that regard and ensure that those liabilities simply do not get consumed into the overall NTMA analysis and annual reports. The point was also made as well that the specialist expertise that has been built up and that will transfer to the NTMA should not to be lost. Considerable expertise has been built up in that agency over many years and it is the kind of commercial and housing expertise that is required for the State to meet its own albeit modest objectives in terms of housing development and the raising of finance to support housing development. Some other recommendations were made as well that I will not go into but the Minister of State will be familiar with them. I would ask the Minister of State and his officials to scrutinise the committee's report on pre-legislative scrutiny and consider some, if not all, of those recommendations for Committee and Report Stages. My last point harks back to the banking situation at the time NAMA was established when the country was in the throes of recession and when all hope appeared to be lost. A significant decision was taken in this House that taxpayers would essentially bail out the main financial institutions. We, in the Labour Party, decided that it was best that we did not support that decision but others did. That we did not is immaterial; it was passed that evening and we made the case as to why that initiative should not have been taken and the implications of that. It brought us closer to the bailout and the loss of our economic sovereignty in late 2010, the outworkings of which have yet to conclude. One of the implications of that was the bailing out of Permanent TSB. The State still owns a majority stake in Permanent TSB. An offer was made by BAWAG P.S.K. recently to purchase the State's remaining share in Permanent TSB. The Minister of State will argue that this is another milestone but it appears to me that the only policy this Government, its previous iteration and the one before that had with regard to banking policy was to rid themselves of what they see as a burden, namely, majority State ownership in banks that the taxpayers of this country bailed out. Our position in the Labour Party is clear. For many years, we were of the view and made the case that PTSB could remain in majority State ownership and that State ownership should be used to try to expand that bank, create a third banking force in this country, break that Bank of Ireland-AIB duopoly and try to introduce more significant competition for householders and small businesses in a market that where competition is very badly needed. It is quite extraordinary given the decision taken almost 20 years ago now to bail out the banks that there has not been a debate in this House on the future of PTSB. That is quite extraordinary. The Government might laud itself and say that this is an expression of the normalisation of the economy now, if I can describe it as such, and the fact that we no longer have any concerns about how our banking system is functioning. However, that is hardly the point given the significant decision made a number of years ago. We requested it at Business Committee meetings over the last period of time. It is quite extraordinary we have not had an informed debate on what we are doing in PTSB, why we are doing it, the nature of the offer, potential implications for banking staff employed in PTSB and implications for account holders and crucially the branch network because from what I can read, there are no guarantees from the prospective new owner and majority owner of PTSB. I have lots of different questions about the Government's decision, why the decision was taken and when PTSB was made aware by the Department of Finance that prior to BAWAG coming forward, another interested party appeared to express an interest in making a pitch to buy the State's share. Lots of different questions have not been ventilated at all in this House. It is quite extraordinary given the burden carried by the taxpayer over many years, the implications of the bank bailout, the burden carried by the taxpayer over many years and the implications of the bank bailout for the Irish taxpayer, our economy and our society more generally. I ask the Minister of State to reflect on that and that he and the Tánaiste and Minister for Finance, Deputy Harris, agree to a debate on the implications of the future of PTSB in this House without any further delay.

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to the Second Stage debate on the National Treasury Management Agency (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2026. This is, in effect, the Bill that closes the book on NAMA. It dissolves the agency, concludes the special liquidation of IBRC and transfers the small amount of residual activity to a new resolution unit within the NTMA. It is a technical Bill but it deserves a serious debate because behind it sits one of the most consequential interventions in the history of the State. NAMA was established in 2009 in the worst economic circumstances the State faced since the 1980s. It acquired 11,500 loans from five Irish banks. The par value of that loan book was €74 billion. The acquisition value was €31.8 billion. It involved over 800 debtor connections and 60,000 properties spread across multiple jurisdictions. Those are not ordinary numbers. They are the numbers of Ireland’s exposure to the international financial crisis and the result deserves to be noted. NAMA fully repaid the €32 billion in debt it issued to acquire those loans. It was self-financing throughout its lifetime. It has returned a lifetime surplus of €5.6 billion to the Exchequer. Not one cent of taxpayers' money was lost in the operation of the agency itself. Professor John FitzGerald in his independent review last year described that surplus as appropriate and reasonable. He concluded that NAMA was "broadly successful". International studies place it among the best examples of a State-backed asset management vehicle anywhere in the world. That is the legacy of the former Minister, Brian Lenihan. It worked in the end and it did more than balance the books. Of course, it did not get everything right. NAMA facilitated the delivery of over 44,500 new homes, though. It delivered nearly 3,000 social housing units directly. It transferred the National Asset Residential Property Service, NARPS, social housing portfolio and two major development sites with capacity for around 4,000 additional homes to the Land Development Agency last year, keeping those State assets in public ownership, which is important. In my constituency of Dún Laoghaire, NAMA-secured sites at Cherrywood and elsewhere played a real part in the housing that has been delivered in recent years. The regeneration of the Dublin docklands for example, a strategic development zone that was a wasteland a decade ago and is now one of the most successful urban quarters in Europe, would not have happened without NAMA. However, we should not allow the orderly end of the agency to become a story that flatters us into forgetting how we got here in the first place. NAMA existed because this country experienced a catastrophic failure of banking, regulation and political oversight in the years before 2008. Hundreds of thousands of jobs were lost. A generation emigrated and the €5.6 billion surplus is a fraction of what the wider banking collapse cost the public. NAMA succeeded in the task it was given but the task should never have been necessary. The question for this House, as we close out NAMA, is whether the lessons have been learned. I want to flag three. First, light-touch regulation does not work. The Central Bank has powers and independence today that it did not have in 2007. That must be protected, not eroded, and this should be remembered the next time the industry argues that rules are too tight. Second, concentration risk in our banking system remains real. The exit of Ulster Bank and KBC reduces competition further. I have highlighted this point in the House many times previously. I also note what Deputy Nash has just said in terms of PTSB and the recent developments there. The Department of Finance and the Central Bank must keep a careful eye on this particular aspect. Third, when the State takes on a complex tasks, clear statutory objectives matter. Professor FitzGerald again was very clear on this. The clarity of NAMA's statutory mandate and the way it was implemented made a major contribution to minimising the cost of the crisis. That is a lesson worth carrying into every State body we establish from hereon in. On the Bill itself, the provisions are sensible. The full repeal of the NAMA Act 2009, and the insertion of a new Part 6A into the National Treasury Management Agency Act 2014, gives NAMA a clean, consolidated statutory framework to bring the residual matters to completion. The scale is small. NAMA officials told the joint committee on finance last month that the resolution unit will begin with assets of less than €30 million, manage roughly eight outstanding litigation cases, and operate with eight staff for an estimated two years. That is the right scale for the job. NAMA is ending the way it should: quietly, in profit and on time. That is unusual for any State intervention and it deserves to be acknowledged. I want to express my thanks to the majority of the hard-working staff and management that delivered this result for Ireland. We need to ensure the lessons learned are remembered and that a NAMA-type bad bank is never required or needed again.

This Bill provides us with an opportunity to reflect on what NAMA was, why it existed, what it could have been, and what lessons we should learn. The word "NAMA" immediately brings to mind one of the darkest periods in recent Irish history and reminds us that when the rich and greedy gamble at the casino, it is ordinary people who pick up the bill. It also reminds us of an era when brutal austerity was inflicted on people by Fine Gael as a direct result of the actions of dodgy bankers and cowboy developers. We should also not forget that NAMA represented a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reshape our housing system for the benefit of ordinary people; an opportunity that was shamefully wasted. Cailleadh an deis seo. Bunchloch dhínit an duine is ea an tithíocht. When the Anglo Tapes came out in 2013, the public got a glimpse behind the curtain of those at the top. Anglo Irish Bank executives were in stitches laughing as they discussed their collapsing bank. They joked about running rings around an incompetent regulator and straddling the Irish public with generational debt. John Bowe, Anglo's head of capital markets, spoke about never paying back the taxpayer and in his words, "pulling made up figures out of his arse". It was all fun and games for those at the top but it was no laughing matter for ordinary people. Jobs were lost, homes were repossessed and emigration returned. Hundreds of people lost their lives to suicide as a result of the economic downturn. The consequence of the recession for these families who lost loved ones could not have been more severe. Houses and apartments should be looked at as homes and not as assets. Treating housing as an investment opportunity is what got us into the mess of the most recent recession. NAMA was the Government's plan to tidy up the mess to sell off thousands of homes and land-banks for knock-down prices to the highest bidder, taking lands and homes off the bankers and handing them over to vulture funds. It was a Fine Gael solution to a Fianna Fáil problem. The civil servants in NAMA achieved what was set out in their statutory remit. I commend their hard work and competence in a time of immense pressure. The problem is the politicians in charge of coming up with what this remit was and their lack of any foresight or imagination. NAMA will have delivered over €5 billion back to the Exchequer by the time it is wound up. Ireland is not currently suffering from a lack of money. There is nearly €39 billion in cash sitting under the management of the NTMA. What we are suffering from is a chronic lack of affordable housing. There are a record 17,517 people living in homeless emergency accommodation. Shamefully, 5,571 of them are children. The median price for a house in Dublin is now €500,000. The average rent for a two-bed apartment in Ireland is over €2,000 a month. Home ownership is becoming a pipe dream for most workers on normal wages. People are struggling just to keep a roof over their head. NAMA took on 60,000 individual assets. Included in this were huge land-banks capable of delivering thousands of affordable homes. While the economic crisis subsided the housing crisis accelerated. In the midst of this housing crisis, NAMA continued its fire sale of desperately needed land and homes. It could, and should, have changed tack but the Government sat on its hands. Homes should have been turned into social and affordable housing. Land should have been developed as housing that people can afford. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to shift housing away from speculators was not taken. Speculation was doubled down on and the vulture funds made billions of euro. In 2014, the vulture funds began to make their move. Project Sand saw a pool of residential loans worth €1.1 billion bought by Lone Star and Oaktree Capital. The Project Stone loan portfolio, worth €6.85 billion, was acquired by CarVal, Lone Star and Deutsche Bank. Project Eagle sold €5.6 billion-worth of commercial loans to Cerberus. The vulture funds were here to stay, buying up loans, buying up homes and pumping up prices. Cerberus alone has seen the value of its assets in Ireland increase by €1.63 billion. Tens of thousands of homes are owned by these funds. People who have had their mortgage sold from underneath them know what a nightmare this can be with exorbitant interest rates, faceless companies and endless debt that they often cannot get out of. There are real people suffering very real consequences because of these political decisions. I recently met a renter in Galway city being evicted from her home of 20 years by one of these vulture funds. Can you imagine being evicted from your home of 20 years by some faceless vulture fund? The former Fine Gael finance Minister, Michael Noonan, defended these vulture funds in 2016 when, talking about the funds that effectively were brought in and welcomed into Ireland in this context, he said that "vultures provide a very good service in the ecology through cleaning up dead animals that are littered across the landscape". This sums up the entire NAMA episode. Ordinary hard-working people were treated like fools by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael and like cash cows by developers, bankers and vultures. As what is left of NAMA is folded into the National Treasury Management Agency, we should also look at the operating practices of the NTMA. Section 40 of the National Treasury Management Agency (Amendment) Act 2014 provides that the National Treasury Management Agency "shall determine, monitor and keep under review an investment strategy for the assets" of the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund, ISIF. ISIF still has investments in companies operating in the illegally occupied Palestinian territories. This is part of the investment strategy decided by the NTMA. It flies in the face of our obligations under international law and the Genocide Convention. The illegal occupation in Palestine is intensifying. A few weeks ago, Aws al-Naasan, a 14-year-old boy, was murdered while he stood at the gate of his secondary school in the West Bank. He was shot in the head by an Israeli settler. This was part of a wave of settler violence in the Occupied West Bank primarily targeted at schools and children.

Unless I have missed something, what is the relevance?

This is relevant. This is absolutely relevant. The Bill is transferring NAMA into the NTMA. I am questioning the record of the NTMA in terms of how it is managing public funds through ISIF. The NTMA is using public money-----

Is it related to the Bill?

Yes, it is absolutely related to the Bill. I raised it at pre-legislative scrutiny. I am putting in an amendment on Committee Stage of the Bill. The NTMA is managing ISIF funds. It has some of our public money in companies that are operating illegally in the occupied territories in the West Bank. I am referring here in the Dáil to some of the repercussions of that. A 14-year-old boy was killed at the school gates by Israeli settlers and yet our public money, managed by the NTMA with Government approval, is being used to fund companies operating illegally in contravention of international law in the West Bank. It is absolutely relevant to this Bill and the NTMA. I raised it previously in pre-legislative scrutiny. I am giving the Minister of State notice that I will be raising it on Committee Stage and tabling an amendment on this. It is absolutely unacceptable that Ireland is still investing in companies that are taking part in this illegal occupation, and doing that through the NTMA. This Bill is about transferring NAMA into the NTMA. The Irish taxpayers do not want their money invested in companies profiting from stolen Palestinian land. The NTMA must take immediate action to fully divest from all these companies without delay. It appears that Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil seem hell-bent on repeating the mistakes of the past. The handouts for property developers are back, the tax cuts for vulture funds are not going anywhere and property prices have gone far beyond their Celtic tiger peak. Lessons must be learned from NAMA. The market will not come to the rescue of the housing crisis. The State must take a leading role in affordable home building. Finally, apartments and houses should never be treated as speculative assets; they are homes. Before I conclude, I want to talk about the pre-legislative scrutiny report that was done by the committee. It is relevant. Why was pre-legislative scrutiny brought in to the Oireachtas? It was brought in post the crash. It was one of the learnings from the crash to make our legislative process stronger. It is regrettable, in his opening remarks, that the Minister of State did not address the committee's recommendations. It is regrettable that six recommendations in the all-party report were not taken on board. In fact, the analysis done by the library and research service, in its excellent Bills digest, shows that the six recommendations were not properly taken on board and, in fact, four of them were not taken on board at all. Deputy Nash referenced them, but I will refer particularly to recommendations 5 and 6 of the committee. Recommendation 5 is that the Minister for Finance provides a table outlining the value of NAMA-managed properties at time of their sale, compared to their current or most recent valuation. That would provide important information in terms of the learnings from NAMA. The committee and the Oireachtas, but also the public, should be provided with that information. Recommendation 6, which is key, is that a report be commissioned detailing a constructive and critical examination of learnings from NAMA and how to best reflect those learnings in the future operations of the NTMA, the Land Development Agency and any other relevant bodies. These are good recommendations from the all-party committee. I urge the Minister of State to take them on board, either through amendments to the legislation or, as I would welcome, if there are other ways that he can provide that information without requiring amendments to the legislation.

During the time when NAMA was dealing with the various property portfolios and issues arising from the work-out of those properties, many questions were asked, many queries were put before NAMA, and many people who had been in business and who found themselves in difficulty after the crash were treated very badly. That is a fact. That is held up by the number of people who appeared before the finance committee and, indeed, by the work of the Committee of Public Accounts. All of those people are being ignored. I am deeply concerned by the way that they were treated and I raised it continuously during the course of that time. I will give one example. This information is in the public domain. Annette De Vere Hunt was one such person. In the case of another individual, a young child in a family who was ill was approached by those who called to the home. It was unacceptable practice. Nothing has ever come out from that organisation to apologise publicly for what went on. Nor has there been any acknowledgement of the wrongdoing of that agency in terms of how it approached its work. Likewise, at the time when some of the bigger property portfolios, particularly in Northern Ireland, were being discussed, very little help and information were given to the committees of this House to enable them to pursue matters in the interests of the citizens of this country. Particular cases were mentioned. What concerns me about this legislation is the fact that when the officials of the Department came before the finance committee, they were outlining their approach to the legislation. It was pointed out to them that they would have to come back to the committee to give details on a case the committee was dealing with, which involved the Butler family. Again, it is in the public domain. I am not breaching anyone's confidence here. They raised many questions not only about their treatment as a family but also about the treatment of their investment going right back to the original loan from the bank. It caused the committee to ask all of these questions and to let the committee hear from the Butler family directly, which we did at that time. I was Chairman of the committee. I would say that most of the members who took on board what was being said were absolutely shocked that the circumstances of their case were not examined. They were also shocked that an agency of the State would not present the facts or deal with the facts that the Butlers were presenting at that time. It was decided that the committee would be briefed from the liquidators' side and that the case would be answered in the context of the facts versus what NAMA or the liquidator had to say. That never happened. In fact, they were to arrange a meeting between some committee members and NAMA relative to how all of this was being exposed publicly, how the facts were being dealt with, if there were facts, and what the case from the other side, which was NAMA, was. That never happened, even though it was promised to an Oireachtas committee representing these Houses. That was before the election. I really thought they would meet with the Butlers and deal with each of the specific accusations or allegations being made, and that each of those allegations would be answered comprehensively. That did not happen. Now we are at a point where the Bill has gone through pre-legislative scrutiny and the specific cases that were of concern, particularly that family from Tipperary, have not been dealt with. This legislation is simply going to be railroaded through this House. Those who have been individually affected by the decisions of NAMA are not going to have the opportunity to be heard. Those who have been heard through the finance committee are not going to be given the opportunity to have all of their questions answered. If their allegations stand up, and there is lots of paperwork around it, that would bring up further questions on other transactions within NAMA that are questionable. The House has been short-changed here in terms of the legislation being rushed through as have the people who have raised queries not being engaged with. Certainly the committee members who showed an interest in the Butler case do not know the outcome. The Minister should at least fulfil the promise of the officials and ensure the details of that meeting as given to the officials are examined. That is the least we should do in the context of this legislation. If that does not happen and we plough ahead with this, we are simply adding further injustice to an injustice to this family. Farms were lost. Investments were lost. The proof is there to be seen. Will the Minister of State make contact with the officials concerned? Will he invite in the Butlers to hear what they have said, or will he read the transcripts from the finance committee meeting? Will he deal with the questions that were raised and the commitments that were given by the officials to the committee members at that time? If he does not do that, the whole process is just meaningless and lacks any form of democracy or compassion as far as I am concerned. That family and others were invited to give their story to the finance committee because it was felt it was that important. During the crash, I saw many things happening to families that were questionable. Many of those queries were raised in various committees of this House. Enough of those queries were raised to give concern to the Government and that concern is not being reflected here. At least one of those families I know of is not being treated properly. That is not the way it should be. The vulture funds and so on entered this country, bought properties and treated people badly and we just took it as being the way it was after the crash. Their behaviour here has been utterly despicable and it continues to this day because of the manner in which those staff were trained. Some of those staff have now moved to mainstream banking with the same culture and attitude they experienced when they were with the vulture funds, dealing with NAMA, closing down operations, closing down families and so on. We do not seem to be concerned about that. It is leading a culture that is a legacy of a different time altogether in Ireland. People are still paying that price. Only this morning I met with families dealing with the vulture funds and whose loans have been transferred. You cannot get information. You cannot get a reasonable person to discuss the issue with you. Everyone is hiding behind GDPR and people are afraid to ask questions. The questions that have been asked should be answered. They will throw light on how other people were treated. We saw this in relation to the tracker mortgage issue. First there were hundreds. The then Governor of the Central Bank, who is now in the European Central Bank, said there were around 5,000 but it was over 50,000. Had it not been for the members of the finance committee pushing and probing on behalf of individual cases, we would not know the extent of that problem. It is a mark on this State that this is the way citizens were treated. It is a mark on the European Union and the European Central Bank that they would have allowed that to happen. Here we are now doing exactly the same thing, short-changing the people we represent, people who have come to us in good faith, asking for support and help. It is not right that they would be ignored. If they are ignored in the context of this Bill and how it is being pushed through the House, then it is a sorry day for Ireland and for the people concerned. I do not raise this lightly or say these things lightly. I say it out of experience on that committee, dealing directly with the people concerned. I am giving the Minister of State the example of the tracker mortgage issue to show him how wrong the Central Bank or officials can be - 5,000 versus 50,000. My God, you could not make it up.

Where Deputy John McGuinness ended is a good place for me to start. You could not make it up and that is the truth about NAMA.

My socialist colleague over there. There are only two of us left.

Absolutely. If only you had taken the left turn at the right point.

I would probably regret that.

You would be in a different place. We might all be. When the history books are written, NAMA will go down as one of the greatest scandals ever. I find it pretty amazing, shocking really but maybe not totally surprising, that the Government tries to present it as some sort of success story. The State paid out €31 billion initially to take over the assets of the developers, who had bankrupted the country, leading to a decade of austerity and huge hardship for the country. We paid €31 billion and the Government's argument is that we got it back and we made €5.6 billion on top of it, so everything is fine and we could even put it down as a success. It was entirely predictable, and some of us predicted it and said it was absolutely clear at the time. The plan for the decision to sell off all those assets to investment funds and vulture funds was hatched when NAMA was originally set up with its mandate in 2009. Most of the sales, and the big push to sell off to the investment funds, happened under the Fine Gael and Labour Party Government that came into power in 2011. I came into the House in 2011 and I remember so well Michael Noonan saying it was necessary to restabilise the Irish property market. At the time some of us said this was a big mistake. We had the biggest property company in the world. I have been reading over some of the stuff and a huge amount of the property was in the Dublin area where the housing crisis is now concentrated. NAMA had the potential to build about 86,000 housing units. Some of us proposed at that time that all of these should be public and affordable housing. Against this, we can look at what the delivery of public and affordable housing has been in the years intervening. For most of the years of the fire sale to the vulture funds that Michael Noonan invited in, a lot of this was being co-ordinated by a group called the Clearing House Group, which had organised special access to the big companies, the Department of Finance and the Department of Taoiseach at the time. It was essentially writing the budgets. If I remember correctly, in 2013 Michael Noonan met 60 of these investment funds where they planned a massive sell-off of this enormous property portfolio, the biggest property portfolio in the world, to these investment funds. There was all this potential to deliver housing that could have been public and affordable housing but instead it was given to these investment funds and now we are buying it back. This is what is happening. The local authorities are buying it back and approved housing bodies are buying it back to provide social housing but at the prices set by these developers who got it from us at knockdown prices. The real maths and arithmetic of this is that we paid €31.8 billion and got €5.6 billion in profit, which amounts to €36.4 billion, but in the intervening period between 2010 and 2025 house prices went up 150%. If we take the figure of €31.8 billion as the bottom of the market for the portfolio - the par value was €70 billion but that is what we paid for it - a 150% increase brings it up to €79.1 billion. We got back €36.4 billion but it went up to at least €79.1 billion and probably more in reality. This is a back of the envelope calculation; it is probably an underestimation of what its actual value was when it was being built out and sold off. The investment funds, the property speculators and the developers walked off with about €42 billion. This is probably a conservative figure but I would say it is the minimum that they walked off with. This is all maths but I will translate it to Cherrywood, one of the big sites that NAMA took over from developers who helped bankrupt the country. It is the biggest residential development in the country and it is in my area. If we include the really expensive houses, the average price there is €1 million. If we take out the really expensive ones, the average price is €600,000 to €700,000. This is what people have to pay to buy them. This rules out the ability of 80% or 90% of ordinary people to buy them. I would say that roughly 80% to 90% of people could not possibly afford them. This is what they sell for. If we look at houses being sold in Cherrywood at that moment we see they are this price. They were all in our hands. Not only this but to take Cherrywood as an example, we put €15 million of taxpayers' money into infrastructural funding for that development. The parks and the roads were paid for by the public but the developer walks off with the profits, selling the houses at €600,000 and €700,000. Insofar as we get 10% social housing, we have to pay developers for it at prices they set. We sold for a song. In this case Hines, one of the big investors invited in at the time, sat on it for about ten years. It was in no hurry to build. It was flipping sites. Mel Reynolds reckons that Hines had made profit before a single brick was laid in Cherrywood because it had already started to flip parcels. TASC has done reports on the wider NAMA portfolio. A lot of the investors who bought had no intention of building; they were just going to hang on until the housing crisis got bad enough that their property investment had increased in value and then they would sell it on. They would sit on it. They wanted to wait and create a housing crisis before they would even consider building or, more likely, flipping it on to somebody else who would then build it out but at massively inflated prices and then we buy it back from them. The Mafia could not have made this one up. We sell it to them at a song, they make massive profit and we buy it back from them. We paid for the infrastructure. We provided LIHAF funding of €15 million with regard to Cherrywood, to give one example. In the original proposal around LIHAF funding, there was supposed to be a 40% give-back of the development in terms of affordable housing. That was dropped within about four weeks. It was taken off the original LIHAF proposal. We thought it was happy days and that we would get 40% social housing and a big chunk of affordable housing because the State had put in this LIHAF funding. That was then dropped and there was no 40%. We were going to get €15 million worth of affordable housing - in other words, we were going to get back what we put in. This would have been a disgrace but we did not even get that. Does the Minister of State know how much affordable housing we got in Cherrywood? None, zero, not a single affordable house. It is unbelievable. Developers just do not do it. Not only this but Cherrywood was supposed to be a flagship development and it was not going to repeat the mistakes of the past. It was to be a new town, the biggest residential development in the country and one of the biggest in Europe. It was going to be a ten-minute town. People would not need a car, and we need to get people out of their cars, because they could walk to everything. There would be parks and infrastructure paid for by the people. There are €600,000 or €700,000 houses, which only a small group of people can afford, and all of the stuff we buy back but at least people would be able to walk to the town centre. There was going to be a town centre. Does the Minister of State know what the town centre is? It is a massive hole in the ground that the developers refuse to build. It is not profitable for them. They do not want to build a town centre. They have no interest in a town centre. Now they have variations on the strategic development zone in order to increase the density so they can make more profit by building more units on the site, or so it becomes more valuable after it gets the planning permission for it or the change in zoning for it. Their investment increases in value again but the people do not have a town centre. I will give an example of how ridiculous it is. There is a bridge that carries the Luas from one side to the other. There is supposed to be a pedestrian bridge as well because there are people living on the other side. However, the developer does not want to build the pedestrian bridge either because it is connected to the town centre. They just do not want to build it. Young kids are running along the Luas line from one side to the other in what is a serious safety hazard because the only shop is a Spar Express across the road from where the town centre is supposed to be. There is supposed to be a town centre with doctors, cinemas and supermarkets but there is just a big, massive hole in the ground and they are allowed away with it. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael councillors are voting in Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown to give them increased densities, so their investments are worth more. You could not make it up. That is replicated all over the country with the NAMA portfolio. Mel Reynolds estimated that NAMA had 70% of the zoned building land around the greater Dublin area at one point. It was the whole land bank. It dictated what we are seeing now, which is house prices nobody can afford. Who can afford that stuff? The big investment funds can buy it up or the State pays massively over the odds to buy back what it originally sold at a knockdown price. That could all have been social and affordable housing, and we could have solved the housing crisis. Now they have gone through all that and largely made their profits from the NAMA portfolio and we are going to do it again. We have not learned the lesson of the massive mistake of allowing these guys to run off with all the profits, control the housing sector, drip-feed the housing and profiteer from it and end up selling it back to us at extortionate prices that nobody can afford. They are fuelling the housing and homelessness crisis. We are now going to do it all over again by rezoning a big pile of agricultural land that is currently worth little. We are going to rezone it, so overnight it will be worth a fortune for its private owners, who are all the same people again - the land bankers and the speculators. This is happening as we speak, and I am amazed that nobody is ringing the alarm bells. To my mind, the scandal is beyond belief. This varies but roughly speaking in the Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown area zoned agricultural or green space is €80,000 per hectare. If it is zoned as residential that value goes from €80,000 per hectare to €5 million per hectare. That is a 625% increase overnight to the owners of that land. That has just been voted through in Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown. It goes without saying that we voted against it. The Fianna Fáilers and Fine Gaelers voted in favour of this. Overnight, the owners get a 625% increase in their investment for doing nothing. They are made multimillionaires but this is not a victimless crime. Where does the money come from? It is just like what happened with NAMA. Somebody is going to pay for this. The person who is going to pay is the end purchaser of the home or the renter. When the houses are finally built, if they ever are by the way, they will do exactly the same. They have over zoned. This proposal from central government is that the national framework is looking for land for 528,000 new homes and for 15,000 ha to be rezoned. However, the required council land is for 300,000. We are massively over zoning by 50% but the people who own this will be made multimillionaires overnight. As I said, it is a 625% increase. When and if they build, they will be selling for €600,000, €700,000, €800,000 or €1 million, which is what some of the stuff is now going for in Cherrywood. The ordinary person trying to buy a home pays for this or, because not many working people can afford that, the big investment funds will buy it and rent it out, and they will rent it at €3,000 or €3,500 per month. That is what it is going for in Dun Laoghaire at the moment. They are making an absolute fortune from unaffordable rents and fuelling all the homelessness and despair over extortionate rents that nobody can afford. That is the increased value that land has now been given because of a vote by a group of councillors in Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown. They are going to do the same in South Dublin, Dublin city and in Fingal. That is where that money comes from. It ends up in houses that cost between €600,000 and €800,000 or rents that are €3,000 or €4,000 per month. Ordinary people pay. Maybe, as we did the last time, the State will end up buying it back, instead of us just bringing the agricultural land into public ownership and rezoning what we need to build public and affordable housing. That is what they do in places like Finland where they have actually tackled the housing crisis and reduced homelessness, and where most of the land bank is in the control of the public authorities. It does not mean there is no private housing. I often hear the Government say that we do not want any private housing. That is not true. In Helsinki, the public authorities decide what is built and whether it is going to contribute to providing housing that is needed, is affordable and so on. Here, we just hand it over to the speculators, the hoarders and the profiteers in the property sector. We make people multimillionaires overnight and screw the vast majority of ordinary people who are just looking for an affordable roof over their head. It is a scandal this is happening when some of us argued way back when that the NAMA mandate should have been changed. We should have developed it as a State construction company and we should have taken the zoned land and the land we are planning to rezone into public ownership to build public and affordable housing. Even now, that is what needs to happen if we are to have any hope of solving the dire housing crisis. That is all history, arithmetic and all the rest of it. However, at the end of the day what it all comes down to is more than 17,000 families in emergency accommodation and thousands of people paying rents they cannot possibly afford. They are paying between 50% and 70% of their income on unaffordable rents, or people are mortgaged up to their necks. If anything goes wrong with the economy, we will find ourselves right back where we were after the crash in 2008 or 2009. If there is any wobble in the Irish economy and people are landed with these massive debts they cannot afford, we will be right back where we were in the previous crash that sent the entire country over a cliff. Will they ever stop? I do not think so. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are not going to stop.

He is opposing student housing in his constituency at Baker's Corner. He is a hypocrite.

I wanted it for the students.

Excuse me. We have rules, abide on both sides.

He is talking out of both sides of his mouth.

We wanted it for students.

Hypocrite.

We wanted it in public ownership for the students.

Deputy Crowe, leave the House if you cannot abide by the rules. I call Deputy Shay Brennan.

He is just a profiteer.

Deputy Boyd Barrett, Deputy Brennan is on his feet and so am I. Rules are rules.

He is the one who started it.

I welcome this Bill and am glad to have the opportunity to speak on it today. The dissolution of the National Asset Management Agency is not just an administrative tidying up exercise. I would very much argue that it is a significant milestone in Ireland's post-crisis economic journey. It is a moment that deserves to be acknowledged and understood and not just processed quietly through this House. NAMA was born in crisis. It is ending in recovery. That arc from emergency to resolution is a demonstration of this State's capacity to make hard decisions, to see them through and come out the other side. I will use my time today to review that journey clearly, to acknowledge the scale of what was achieved, to be honest about the controversy that surrounded it and to say something about why the transfer of remaining functions to the NTMA is the right and appropriate conclusion. To understand NAMA's achievement we have to go back to where we were in 2009 and 2010. The global economy was in free-fall. The property market had collapsed with catastrophic force. Our financial system was sitting on tens of billions of euro in loans that were worth a fraction of what they had been written at. The guarantee of 2008 had bought some time but that time alone was not going to fix the fundamental problem of a banking system paralysed by bad debt, unable to function, unable to lend and unable to support the real economy. The question facing the Government of the day was stark. Should it let the banks collapse, should it nationalise everything outright or should it create a mechanism to extract the toxic assets from the balance sheets, allow the banks to stabilise and manage the recovery of those assets over time in a way that maximised returns to the taxpayer? The decision was to create NAMA. It was not a popular one. It was deeply controversial from the moment it was announced. There were legitimate questions raised in Dáil Éireann and across the country about the haircuts applied to the loans, transparency, who was benefiting and who was bearing the cost. I do not dismiss those questions. Many of them were asked in good faith and deserved serious answers, but the judgment of time has been clear that the decision to establish NAMA was the correct one. Let us review what NAMA achieved, because the numbers are remarkable and deserve to be stated clearly. NAMA acquired loans with the nominal value of approximately €74 billion. It paid about €32 billion for those loans, which was a discount reflecting their distressed nature. Over its lifetime, it generated a surplus income for the State of over €4 billion. An agency created in the depths of a financial crisis to manage what were essentially the worst excesses of the Irish property and banking sectors turned a profit of over €4 billion for the taxpayer. That was not the expectation of many commentators in 2010. It was not even the central expectation of many supporters of the agency. It is an extraordinary outcome. NAMA's contribution was not only financial. It played a crucial role in stabilising the property market. By managing the disposal of assets in an orderly, phased way rather than dumping them on the market simultaneously, NAMA helped prevent the kind of catastrophic price collapse a disorderly liquidation would have caused. That discipline and patience protected the value of assets held not just by NAMA but across the entire economy. NAMA also became, perhaps unexpectedly, one of the most significant funders of residential construction in Ireland during the recovery period. It funded the delivery of tens of thousands of homes, contributed directly to social and affordable housing through local authorities and approved housing bodies and helped unlock development on key strategic sites around the country. This is a substantial part of NAMA's legacy that deserves recognition, particularly in the context of the ongoing housing challenges. I should note that NAMA managed a geographically complex portfolio, with assets in Britain, across continental Europe and in the United States, and did so with commercial discipline and without the fire sale disposal many feared. It was studied internationally as a model for how a state asset management vehicle can be structured and governed effectively. NAMA staff and management should be commended on that. There is an aspect of NAMA's legacy that rarely gets the credit it deserves, namely, what it did for Ireland's reputation internationally. In 2010, we were a country the international markets had effectively written off. The interest rates being demanded on our sovereign debt were excessive. The establishment of NAMA and, critically, its credible and professional operation over subsequent years were part of the signal to international investors that Ireland was serious, we had a plan and we intended to honour our obligations. Neither the return to the bond markets, nor the exit from the Troika programme, nor the restoration of our sovereign credit rating happened in isolation. NAMA was part of the scaffolding that made that possible. I want to be fair-minded and not simply eulogise without acknowledgement of the real concerns that were raised over the years. In the interest of balance it would not be right to speak about NAMA without noting that it was not without its difficulties along the way. Questions were raised at various points in this House and before the public accounts committee, and that scrutiny was appropriate and right. No agency operating at this scale under this kind of pressure and over this length of time could expect to do so entirely without controversy and NAMA was no different. The fair reflection with the benefit of hindsight is simply that transparency and public accountability are always worth strengthening in bodies of this kind and that there is always room for a better balancing of commercial sensitivity with public oversight. That is a lesson worth keeping in mind for the future. Those questions, fairly asked and properly pursued, do not diminish the overall record. They are part of how democratic oversight is supposed to function. The agency's fundamental achievements stand on their own terms. The overall verdict on NAMA must be judged on outcomes and the outcomes it delivered. This brings me to where we are today and the specific provisions of the Bill. NAMA has substantially completed its work. The vast majority of its loan portfolio has been disposed of. Its active commercial function is at an end and what remains are a small number of residual assets, ongoing commitments in relation to certain legacy matters and a staff complement that has reduced dramatically from the agency's peak. The Bill provides for the dissolution of NAMA and the transfer of its remaining functions, assets and staff to the National Treasury Management Agency. This is entirely sensible. The NTMA is the appropriate home for these residual functions.

Is the Deputy sharing with Deputy Crowe?

Yes. I only need a little more time.

All right.

It has the governance structures, the financial expertise and the institutional capacity to manage what remains in a cost-effective and accountable way. Keeping a separate statutory agency alive with its own board, overheads and administrative infrastructure when the substantive work is done would be a waste of public resources. The model of a time-limited, purpose-specific vehicle has been vindicated. NAMA was designed to do a job and then to go. It is now going and that is exactly as it should be. The transfer of staff deserves a specific mention. The men and women who worked in NAMA, particularly those who joined at the height of the crisis, took on a difficult and sometimes thankless task in a highly charged public environment. Many of them were working on complex financial, legal and property matters under significant public scrutiny and, at times, criticism. They served the State well. The transition to the NTMA should be managed with full respect for their rights and their service. I ask the Minister of State to confirm appropriate protections and continuity of terms are in place for all staff affected. I will say a final word about what the passing of this Bill means because it is worth slowing down to reflect on. In 2010 when NAMA was being established, there were serious commentators – serious, informed people – who doubted Ireland could manage its way out of the crisis without a decade of depression, a sovereign default and a managed restructuring of the State's obligations. The scale of what we were facing was overwhelming but we did not default or collapse and we stabilised our banks, managed our debt, returned to the markets, exited the Troika programme and rebuilt. I support the Bill. I commend the work of those who designed and managed NAMA over its lifetime. I welcome the transfer to the NTMA as a logical, efficient and appropriate conclusion to the agency's existence. I take this moment to note for the record of the House that Ireland's response to one of the gravest financial crises in our history was not perfect, as nothing ever is, but it was, by any fair measure, a success.

I thank my colleague for sharing time with me. This is a very important Bill and I welcome the opportunity to speak on it. As Deputy Brennan said, nothing in this time was perfect but the State had to very quickly step in and decide how we could manage assets at a time of global financial crisis. Since then, NAMA has been lauded internationally as one of the best structures put in place during the economic crash of those years to manage state assets. I can only think of one comparable initiative. A few years prior to the economic crash, I was an Erasmus student in the Czech Republic, which only seven or eight years previously had emerged from communism to stand on its own two feet as a democratic country. It was also a fledgling EU nation at the time following the passing of the Nice treaty. The country had to bring in mechanisms to stop people from overseas purchasing properties at knockdown prices as it wanted its own people to have the properties. It seemed a very sensible approach and it too has since been wound back. It makes sense to wind back NAMA. It was a solid way to manage State assets at that time. It is worth noting the agency took on a loan book with a par value of €74 billion. This comprised 60,000 properties and 5,000 borrowers. Over its lifetime, it repaid all €32 billion in debt issued to acquire loans and has been fully financially sustainable throughout that time. This is good legislation. NAMA may not have been popular initially, but it has certainly proved its worth. It has been shown to be a good, solid and stable basis on which to manage assets during a time of crisis. Charges were made moments ago about how developments happen in south Dublin. I was a school teacher. Many of my past pupils are gearing up for their leaving certificate examinations and they will make choices over the coming weeks about what college they will go to. God help them if they are going to college in Dublin. A development called Baker's Corner, with 300 student accommodation beds, was planned in south Dublin. The lead objector to that development, which took it through the wringer and all the way to An Coimisiún Pleanála, or An Bord Pleanála as it was then known, was Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett. I will quote from his appeal. It stated: "It is much too large and will be very much out of character with ... the 2 storey houses and Ashbury Nursing Home". When students from County Clare are looking for accommodation this year, they should remember that this project has been held up for five years, and it may never see the light of day, because of the hypocrisy of one of the Members of this House.

We are talking about NAMA and its winding up. It is easy to wind up something when people would not talk to you. I will give a small bit of history, without mentioning names, of a case to do with the likes of NAMA and it not interacting with people in their times of trouble. I am talking about people who were in trouble in 2016, like a lot of other people in the country, and there was a judgment against them. The judgment was for €55,000, which was the sum owed. The order for interest was €9,000. In 2016, these people entered into a payment plan to get back on their feet. About a year into it, when they got back on their feet, they tried to get through to NAMA and the financial institution to do a deal on how they could finish their loan book. I have the file in front of me. The dates are from early 2016, and these people still have their payment plan in place today. They still cannot get a meeting with NAMA to finish up their accounts. We are talking about 2016, so we are ten years on, and the balance on their account is now just under €55,000. This is the amount for which the first judgment was brought against these people in 2016. We are winding up something that we said was a great thing at the time and that took on all the different purchases. How many cases have been in the Supreme Court concerning loan books that were sold off by NAMA and the likes of Pepper that were brought in? They were working in this country illegally during the first 12 months because they did not have 12 months of accounts done. How many High Court battles were lost over that? How many people's properties were taken because of the likes of NAMA? People wanted to enter into agreements to save their businesses and houses. How many of those people were there? What is going to be done now? NAMA is going to be dissolved and the buck is going to be passed to somebody else. Nobody else will talk to these people and somebody else will get paid again to deal with something that was not dealt with in the first place. Last year, we had a case where the Supreme Court overruled some of the financial institutions that got their loan books through NAMA. They were found guilty of taking properties during the first 12 months of their existence. What is going to happen with those properties? What is going to happen with the livelihoods that were lost because people in NAMA would not talk to these people? What are we going to do with those people? Who is going to reimburse them now? Who is going to deal with the portfolio involving those people who were never talked to? It is another thing that we will sweep under the carpet. We will get rid of it and we will now put something else in its place to take on the last of the loan books and assets NAMA has. There is no accountability. Are the people who were involved in this institution going to get promoted? Will they get Government jobs in different Departments? Will they get promotions in which they can excel in their careers after NAMA? That is where we see problems arising from this. An awful lot of people in NAMA have to account for things they have done wrong. They may have got a couple of bits and pieces right and may have dealt with different people in different ways, but they also left behind the good, hard-working people who wanted to fix up their books. They will not be forgiven for it and nor will the Government.

I will start where Deputy O'Donoghue left off in his excellent speech. I will just give an overview of where people stand in relation to NAMA. This Bill marks what the Government will present as a final chapter in the State's response to the banking collapse. We are being asked to wind up NAMA and transfer what remains of the IBRC into the NTMA to close the emergency structures created during one of the darkest periods in our financial history. In principle, that is the right thing to do. These bodies were always meant to be temporary. We need to be clear that while the Government is closing the institutions of the crisis, the people are still paying for it. Nowhere is this more obvious or more unjust than in the ongoing existence of the universal social charge. The USC was introduced as a temporary emergency tax. The public were told it was temporary and necessary in a time of crisis and it would be removed when the crisis passed. The Government is telling us today that the crisis is over, NAMA is being shut down and the IBRC is being wrapped up. We are being told the clean-up is complete. Here is the simple question. If the crisis is over, why is the USC still being taken out of workers' wages every week? We have to be honest about it. The USC has become a permanent tax by stealth. It is no longer an emergency measure and no longer temporary. It is now baked into the system, quietly taking from pay packets across the country. The people who are paying it are the very same people who had no role whatsoever in causing the banking collapse. They are ordinary workers and families trying to make ends meet, people in communities all over Ireland who were already stretched and are stretched even further now with the cost of living. They did their part, carried the burdens and paid what they were asked to pay, and now, when the State is closing the very institution that justified that USC charge, these same people are being told that nothing changes for them. This is not fairness or honesty, and the public can see straight through it. If NAMA can be wound up and the IBRC can be consigned to history, the Government needs to explain why one of the most visible symbols of that crisis, the USC, remains firmly in place. Otherwise, people will rightly conclude that while the crisis may be over for the State, it is not over for them. That brings us back to the Bill, which transfers enormous powers to the NTMA, including litigation, asset management and broad confidentiality provisions. As we do that, we must not allow transparency to disappear along with NAMA. We need firm guarantees that the Oireachtas will retain real oversight, reporting will be full and accessible and every remaining asset, liability and legal matter is fully accounted for. The taxpayers paid for this system and the taxpayers deserve the full truth at the end. We should complete the wind-down of NAMA and close these bodies, but the public should not be asked to accept closure when they are still footing the bill. The end of the banking crisis must mean something real for people who paid for it. That means not just shutting down institutions but finally addressing the unfair, so-called temporary burdens that were supposed to go with those institutions. Deputy O'Donoghue raised the issue of the good, honest business people and householders who tried their level best to communicate with NAMA and get out of a crisis. Not everybody wants to screw the State, to use an unsavoury word, and not everybody has that in mind, but people do fall into difficulties. Like the Minister of State and many other Deputies, I have dealt with numerous people in that situation who wanted to pay their way out, and sit down and do a deal, but who were refused by NAMA and the vulture funds. It was all one big happy connection. It was a case of grabbing people's property, putting them out of business and destroying their lives. How many people have died because of this? It is an astonishing question to ask, but I guarantee the Government has no understanding. How many people died in despair? How many people went home and ended their lives? The Government is afraid to answer that question because it is a true fact. It is a fact. They lost their lives because they lost their businesses and homes. They begged for help but they got nothing in return from a State that cost them their lives. It cost people their businesses but, more importantly, it cost people their lives. It is astonishing that it will never, ever be known. It is the hidden secret and crisis of this country, where people would not sit down with those who were facing difficult times because they borrowed. They over-borrowed. I accept that but they wanted to negotiate their way out. That was true of so many of them I met and on whose behalf I pleaded but we were met with deaf ears. It is an awful situation for people to find themselves in, about to lose the home their children are living in or their business that provides food for their families, be they man or woman. I represented so many of them. I saw them and I know where they ended up because of it and that is a shocking indictment of a Government that does not care. The USC is a pittance for the Government to hand back to the State after what it has taken from people and what it has cost this country. That was under the leadership of Fianna Fáil. The bodies in place, whether vulture funds or NAMA, should have sat down with the people who wanted to sit down and found a way forward, rather than just grabbing. Let us call them what they were - vultures. That is what they turned out to be.

First, I want to acknowledge, given the headline topic we are discussing, that NAMA played an important stabilising role at a moment of national crisis. I was there at the time and was involved in the Government that made the decisions. I saw the logic and supported its establishment at the time under the circumstances that were forced on people. However, it is also clear that NAMA's record is mixed, due to what were largely Government decisions. I acknowledge that NAMA had an independent mandate but it was given a mandate and terms of reference and because of that, there were opportunities that were not fully realised. Those broader questions deserve a fuller debate in their own right. I would love to talk for an hour on it and maybe we will get that chance some time. I will use some of my time to focus on that but first I acknowledge that we are dealing with the final narrow phase of NAMA's existence and the transfer of its remaining functions to other bodies. What is left are residual loans and I hope that where small people are impacted, they get a good shout. There is a whole load of outstanding legal cases and other stuff which, one could argue, does not require a stand-alone agency any more and all of the bureaucratic costs associated with it. On that point and purely on the specifics, the Bill before us makes sense. Transferring the remaining functions to the NTMA allows for a streamlined transition. However, it is important that we assess the NAMA legacy honestly. While it did make a paper return of €4 billion, it did not realise the full potential of the assets it was entrusted with managing. It also did not necessarily help people who could have been dug out of a hole, individuals and small businesses, rather than the big entities which some of my colleagues have referenced. The fact that NAMA did not realise its potential is not just my opinion as a TD but is borne out by the market evidence and assessments of independent observers. Between 2013 and 2015, NAMA sold some of the largest loan portfolios in the history of the State. According to the National Competitiveness and Productivity Council, commercial property values in Dublin rose by over 70% between 2013 and 2018, while development land values in some areas more than doubled. Many of the assets that later benefited from that recovery had already been sold off by NAMA. While I acknowledge that everything is better in hindsight, we should be able to look at the bigger picture. In hindsight, they were sold at massively discounted prices. The Irish Times reported in 2016 that several major portfolios sold to international investment funds were subsequently resold at profits ranging from 30%, which is not half-bad when one thinks about it, to over 100% in some cases, often within a few years. The public accounts committee in its 2017 review noted that significant value uplift accrued to purchasers rather to the State. Basically, the State exited too early. We know that NAMA's mandate pushed it towards rapid de-leveraging rather than long-term value creation. The agency itself stated in its 2014 annual report that it was accelerating disposals to meet debt repayment targets. Those targets, to be clear, were shaped largely by the political and institutional environment of the time which rewarded early repayment and visible progress. I would argue that it was more on the political side because the Government of the day wanted to be able to say that it had made progress in advance of the 2016 election, even if that meant forgoing future gains. If one was looking at it from the perspective of what is in the best interests of the country rather than in the best interests of those going into the next election, one might have said we should wait a little bit longer. It is a fair question to ask whether the State could have earned more by holding assets for longer or by retaining the income-producing properties for rental yield. Experts who know a lot more than I do would argue that was the case and the evidence also suggests so. The ESRI, for example, in its 2019 analysis of post-crisis asset management said that a longer-term hold strategy would likely have produced higher net returns for the State, particularly in the residential and office sectors. None of this is to deny the challenges we faced, the pressure from Europe and the ECB or the constraints that NAMA operated under but we must learn from this. How far back do we go? If one wanted to be fair minded, one could argue that successive Fianna Fáil administrations made the boom boomier. The larger political parties at the time had a very close relationship with developers. Some of those relationships were examined in tribunals and even if we did not get to the levels of outright corruption, there was a cosy consensus with developers and Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael in particular. That kind of consensus led to decisions that massively increased the value of land for certain developers and led to speculation. It got to the stage that by 2006, most of the State's revenues were coming through services. In the 2008 and 2009 period, we absolutely had global pressures and a global collapse. It was not, obviously, endemic to Ireland per se but the crash was made crashier because of previous Fianna Fáil policies in particular. I was in one of the Government parties at the time. We had some very serious decisions to make and we made them. I remember having a meeting two years before the 2011 general election and saying that it looked like we were all going to lose our seats. I asked what we were going to do and suggested that we should try to do what was best for the country, one way or the other. I know that every grouping in government at that time - and I pay tribute to the late Brian Lenihan - was trying to doing its best in the circumstances. The bank guarantee scheme, in hindsight, may not have been absolutely necessary. We do not know if some of the banks were systemic banks or not. All we know is that we could not have taken that risk. The former Deputy, Eamon Gilmore, said it was either Frankfurt's way or Labour's way but it turned out to be Frankfurt's way. The Troika came in and told us precisely what to do. We could not afford to do what the Greeks did and, indeed, they lost out down the line in any event. The European Central Bank and our European Union partners were prepared to give us a dig out but not in a way that would put themselves into discomfort. We were forced into a situation in 2009 and 2010 where, if we did not make decisions that hurt people, it was going to hurt people a lot more. That is not a great position to be in. We still have the legacy of that, with nurses, gardaí and teachers on starting incomes that are a lot less than they should be. I have called for that pay restoration several times. That has not happened and then we wonder why there are recruitment issues. Coming back to the present, we could have had additional funds for the State if NAMA had been handled in a more assessable way. We should have looked at the situation in 2013, 2014 and 2015 and, noting the trend was upwards, we should have said, "Let us hang on and let us realise more for the State, rather than trying to make a political point in advance of the election". If we are to learn from this experience, we must acknowledge that the agency's potential was not fully realised and that was because of politics rather than best practice. I hope we never again get into a scenario in which we are put under global pressure. If we have to create another NAMA in the future, we must look at it in a more strategic way and consider what outcomes to seek and whether we can change the system as we go along to realise the best outcome for the people of the country. We were sold short. NAMA made an extra €4 billion in terms of the paper assessment of the value of its assets at the time but a lot of income was left behind that could have been gained for the people.

When NAMA came into being, the State was in a really dark place. The economy had collapsed, there were no jobs and people were really struggling. We had ghost estates and sites that were half developed. Fianna Fáil destroyed the economy. I remember it as clear as day. I remember friends of mine losing their jobs. To add insult to injury, when Fine Gael came into government in 2011, all it gave a damn about was austerity. The ordinary working men and women of this country were thrown under a bus. The most vulnerable, including pensioners and people with disabilities, suffered the most. I remember that. Now the economy is going well and there are jobs, but a lot of people are struggling more than ever. There are empty houses on a huge scale but there still are ghost estates, including in Carrignavar and right across the State. There is a site not far from here in Dublin Central that has been empty for ten years. It could be used to build public homes for the families and workers in Dublin who need them. Empty NAMA sites were sold off across the State and they are being sat on by speculators and vulture funds as they laugh all the way to the bank. I was elected to Cork City Council in 2009. I remember clearly the devastation caused by austerity at that time. Then Michael Noonan rolled out the red carpet for the vulture funds to come in and operate tax free. To this day, they still operate on a tax-free basis. The Government lets them off. The ordinary working men and women, however, are not free of tax. They still have to pay the USC. We are here today to talk about the winding down of NAMA. Why is there no winding down of the USC? Why is it always ordinary hard-working people who must foot the bill while the bankers, developers, speculators and vulture funds laugh all the way to the bank? The CEO of NAMA is moving to the NTMA on a salary of €430,000. All the NAMA staff will keep their terms and conditions of employment. I do not know what the CEO will be doing in his new role. He could be over there making tea. How can his appointment be justified? People are being laid off this week at Meta. Ambulance drivers are out fighting for their rights, and have been fighting for years, but the Government will not give them the terms and conditions to which they are entitled. However, there are jobs for the NAMA lads. They can be given anything they want. Where is the fairness? I recall standing on the picket lines with the Debenhams workers. When the Vita Cortex workers lost their jobs years ago, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael said they would make changes to legislation to protect workers. They still have not done it. Instead, they gave sweetheart deals to big business and vulture funds that picked NAMA dry. "Vulture funds" is the perfect name because they cleaned out NAMA. Deputy Doherty will soon table amendments, which we believe are fair and right, to protect workers. I know people who lost their jobs and houses and whose marriage or relationship ended. They lost everything. I know people who died by suicide as a result of the banking and financial crisis. We should never forget that Europe threw us under the bus. We were the only country that took on all our debt, while others were given a way out. NAMA might be gone but the USC is still here.

My colleague Deputy Toole cannot make it to the Chamber as she is stuck in traffic. She asked me to convey her hope that some of the extra funds that become available as a result of the wind-down of NAMA will be ring-fenced for projects in her constituency. She hopes the Navan rail project, for which a preferred route was announced today, is one of the projects for which the funding now arising out of this sorry saga is ring-fenced. I am glad to have an opportunity to speak on this Bill, which brings about the final winding down of NAMA and the transfer of all remaining matters to the NTMA. As I have said many times in this House, the legacy of NAMA is a trail of destruction left behind for families, villages and towns across the country. Under the guise of a workout vehicle, it has been the most economically destructive agency in Ireland's history. It has been the catalyst for the disastrous housing crisis that has plagued us. I said that last night and have been saying it for the past year. I pay tribute to the late Brian Lenihan for the efforts he made. I said to him here late one night that NAMA was like a wild animal being released in the woods and no one knew where it would end up. There are very many human stories arising out of NAMA, many of which are still unresolved. There have been many claims of corruption and fraudulent activity, which has gone on without anybody being held to account. NAMA has a very poor history. No State-sponsored and State-staff vehicle should be able to perform fraudulent activities without being held accountable or punished. I want to put on the record again one of those human stories, as I have many times before. I refer to the story of John Fraher, an excellent businessman from Clonmel, County Tipperary. I have raised his case directly with the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste, the finance committee and the head of Revenue. The issue continues to be ignored and swept under the carpet. The fear with NAMA being dissolved is that issues like this will remain firmly under the carpet and there will be no accountability for anyone. John Fraher has received a letter from Revenue that is quite alarming. I have to hand a document from which I will quote the following paragraph: I have raised the matter of fraudulent transactions involving NAMA in the past and the matter is so serious that it brings into focus the reason that NAMA was staffed by NTMA employees. It is a perfect case of a Department of Finance-sponsored system that could perform transactions and would never be prosecuted or held to account as the gatekeeper and enforcement agency of the State was compromised from the start. I thank the Leas-Cheann Comhairle for his excellent work in this area. I also must mention the Butler family in Clonmel, who were blackguarded. Many families have been destroyed. There have been marriage separations and families split. Many people have taken their own lives. I thank the Leas-Cheann Comhairle for his work at the finance committee and for being brave in trying to get answers. The document in my hand further states: "The Department of Finance could control each element of the system and ensure that each transaction was rubber-stamped by Revenue, regardless of whether it was legal or not". That is hard to understand. I now refer to a Revenue Commissioners' Collector General receipt, dated 21 February 2015, notice No. 0973138/001310. This receipt was provided to National Asset Loan Management Limited. The receipt was based on a ROS payment dated 16 February 2015 made by National Asset Loan Management Limited. NAMA attached a letter to Revenue to explain the payment made. The letter was signed by a Ms Teresa Talbot, head of tax. In regard to the letter dated 16 February 2015, the details provided to Revenue are not true. They are downright false. The Chairman of Revenue is fully aware of the 2015 transaction I am referring to. The fraudulent scheme began with a false transaction that allowed a sequence of transactions to occur which involved, among other things, VAT fraud. I raised this here countless times. An Garda Síochána told me it cannot investigate it. The EU Commissioner, the Minister of State's former colleague, raised this question here on several occasions as finance spokesman before he left to go to his European post. Another example of a Revenue-generated document that arises from the original fraud by the National Asset Loan Management Limited is a stamp duty certificate dated 13 April 2015, stamp certificate ID150441576/81B3090415/J. The Department of Finance is attempting to destroy any trace of fraudulent activities by removing NAMA and its various entities and providing cover for all State employees who carried out or assisted in that fraud. This is a shocking situation that we are passing Second Stage of this Bill today. There are families who are traumatised. As others have said, we are paying the USC, which was a temporary measure to pay for all of this. There was fraud, money was made and illegal transactions were carried out and a blind eye was turned to this. It is just a shocking vendetta. The Bill dissolves NAMA and transfers everything, including unresolved litigation which will extend beyond the formal wind down of the agency but it will not take into account the fraudulent activities which happened under its watch. I ask the Minister of State to answer those questions. There are many Johnny Frahers in this country, as I said. I could name dozens of them. We had the Clonmel Arms project. I called it project jackdaw. There was scurrilous interference with properties of NAMA. We got the information when there was a buyer trying to buy it. The Butler family was mentioned. I know countless families from all over the country as the Minister of State must too. Michael Noonan would not talk to anyone at the time and said the vulture funds were necessary. Anyone who rears sheep or knows anything about country living knows the vulture is the most despicable bird or creature given its very name. He told his own backbenchers to ignore any families that came to them. We had the case of a wonderful auctioneer in Cashel, Mr. De Vere Hunt, who ended up in his grave as a result of NAMA. His wife came in to testify in front of the Leas-Cheann Comhairle, who was Chair of a committee, but it was blocked. It was thanks to the Leas-Cheann Comhairle that she came in for a private session and had her say. People were brought to tears listening to her story. There are hundreds of those stories up and down the country. These are lives wrecked and ruined. When the Government tells us the NTMA will now take over all remaining matters, what guarantees do people like Mr. Fraher and the other families have that their cases will finally be treated fairly and people will be held to account for any wrongdoing? What assurances are there that the mistakes of NAMA will not simply be inherited and quietly buried? I think that is what is going to happen. I am very concerned about it. The Bill states that the NTMA will be substituted for NAMA in all proceedings and that no cause of action will be taken against the NTMA solely by reason of the transfer. That is a nice way of getting out of all of this and leaving it behind. That may protect the State but who protects the citizens who have been destroyed by this? Who protects the people who pay the USC every week? Nobody does. This is a shocking vista. We are now going to have it all buried and we are going to pay the CEO even though there is no job for him in the NTMA. We are going to give him more than €400,000 a year. In God's name, are the lunatics running the asylum? Are we so badly off and unaccountable that we allow this to happen? Who ensures that the unresolved grievances - and there are thousands of them - the very ones I have raised for years are not lost in the reshuffle? There is a deliberate ploy that we will be lost. I want to be very clear I am not opposing the idea of winding down NAMA. I opposed it being set up. I am worried that proper transparency and accountability will not transfer with it. I am opposing the attempt to use this dissolution as a way of dissolving responsibility. The people affected by NAMA and the citizens deserve closure, support, counselling and to have some modicum of their lives back. Transparency is essential but it is a very scarce item in this House with this Government and with successive governments. Too much of NAMA’s work was hidden behind confidentiality. If we are closing this chapter, the truth must be allowed to come out. Some media outlets have shown interest here but editorials will not allow them to publish it. The fear of the big hand, the might of money and the threats is there. I will continue to raise this case and others like it until the State acknowledges the human cost of decisions made by NAMA and IRBC. I will support any measure that brings fairness, accountability and closure but I will not support a process that simply dissolves the entity while dissolving responsibility along with it. We have to be very careful here. This is a nice, glossy Bill. I heard the Minister of State’s speech and other speeches as well. I know of so many cases. I raise the case of the Poppyfield Retail Park in Clonmel. That scheme was the brainchild of Mr. Fraher. I refer to what went on there and the transfer of lands and yet hotels are operating without planning permission and no fire certificate. I do not want to damage a hotel that provides a great service and has great employees but I refer to the sheer corruption with the transfer of that land, money changing hands and it being all hush hush. You cannot get answers. An Garda Síochána is refusing to investigate this. I was told by the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste and others to go to the gardaí. Revenue has refused to meet Mr. Fraher, me or anyone. It is hoping this will all go away like snow off a ditch. There will be a long summer, and thank God the weather is picking up today. However, this is not going to go away. It was wrong from the start but it is even more wrong now that we would push this aside and place it into this new agency that we do not have faith in either and give the employees there carte blanche and good jobs. It is shocking. Again, I thank the Leas-Cheann Comhairle, who was one of the Government TDs who tried to assist families. He and I met with some of them. We have Professor Honohan's report and what he brought to light and the total unfairness in the courts.

I am glad to get the opportunity to say a few words. As many others have said, those ten years were an awful time in the lives of many people in our country. Many people lost their homes and lands and, worse than that, they lost their marriages and some of them lost their children. They lost everything. Some even lost their lives. It was a terrible time and NAMA was a word many people regretted and resented. I refer to the liquidators, vulture funds and the things that happened. As I said, homes were taken. The thing I worried about most was that there was no court order in many cases. Liquidators and receivers took it upon themselves to close the book on people and sell their properties. There are many instances where the former owners attempted to buy back their property from the receiver but they were not allowed to do so because the receiver had favourites to whom to sell it to - maybe to their own families. That needs to be followed up. Where a property or a home was sold and there was no court order, that needs to be investigated because that was totally wrong. They should have been engaged with and it should have gone through the courts to ensure it was proper. I cannot understand how a deed could be taken from someone and passed on to someone else. Were new deeds written or what happened that new people could take over a person's land while that person still had the deed and the courts never took them? I cannot understand that. Like many others have said, the universal social charge was brought in at the time of financial difficulty to try to keep the country running. There is no need for it now and many working-class people are still suffering. I do not understand why the Government is closing the book on NAMA. I am worried that there are still people who may not have been dealt with properly and that we will be closing some legal gap for them to come back and fight their cases and maybe get their property, or the value of it, back. I am worried about it. I am not sure about it. Like Deputy Mattie McGrath, I thank Deputy John McGuinness for the fearless way he dealt with many people as Chair of the Committee of Public Accounts and the tough questions that had to be asked and answered. I appreciate him for being straightforward and as honest as he could, regardless of where it left him. I have a special hatred for vulture funds. There should be no place for them. If people had engaged or dealt with the banks to get loans or mortgages, the banks should still be looking for the repayments and not vulture funds because the vulture funds did desperate things to people. They forced and blackguarded people and did everything in the world to people. I regret and resent that. I will always remember it as a desperate, undemocratic time in the lives of people all over the country. I hope that the fact there was no court order in many instances will be dealt with because many people will not be dealt with fairly until that has been tested. Many people were left behind and dealt with wrongly where there was no court order. Their places were put up for sale with a certain auction date, perhaps not even advertised publicly enough. Their places were sold behind their backs in many instances, without going through any court or any judge making an order that their properties, houses or land could be sold. I hope some day those people will get fairness and retribution for what happened to them. I am sorry for the people who lost their lives and marriages. Losing property is one thing, but families and lives are much more precious than anything material. So much happened that I am not sure why the Government is doing this. There is another aspect. Who decided that this chairman, CEO or whatever he will be, will get more than €400,000? Why does it have to be that amount of money? No man or woman in the State is worth that kind of money. When I think of all the people who suffered financially, it might have been for small sums of money when we look back on it. This is a massive sum of money to be giving to one man and making a job for him. The Government will not get much praise for this because it is another big job for one of the boys and I could not stand over that. I could not vote for that and I will not be voting for it either. I cannot see that it is fair on the people who suffered over the years, especially in the past ten or 15 years.

I thank all the Members for their contributions. I will endeavour to reply to all the points that were raised. I will do it just to myself and the Leas-Cheann Comhairle by the looks of things, but the Leas-Cheann Comhairle did contribute. I say that somewhat in jest because I acknowledge that many Deputies are tuned in in their offices and that not everyone can sit in the Dáil for hours at a time. The question "why now?" has been asked a number of times. The reason is that NAMA and the IBRC special liquidators have now substantially completed their mandates and are reaching the final stage of their life cycle. That is why the Bill is being proposed at this stage. I acknowledge that although many people have been critical in some of their commentary today, no one has indicated outright that they will vote against the legislation. Certainly, the three main Opposition parties have indicated their support for it. As I mentioned earlier, it is appropriate that any remaining matters - particularly litigation - are managed within a streamlined structure. The Bill provides a practical approach to achieving this, while ensuring continuity and legal certainty for all parties and preserving existing rights and obligations. The NTMA is well placed to take on this role. The residual activity it is taking on will be ring-fenced within the NTMA. It has the governance, expertise and experience required to manage complex financial and legal matters to completion, while avoiding the cost and duplication of maintaining separate structures which are no longer required, given the reduced scale of the remaining activity. It is worth going back to look at the mandate that was set for NAMA, which was to get the best return achievable for the State. NAMA began by de-leveraging its overseas portfolio in 2012, where the recovery was stronger. Then, in Ireland, as recovery began to take hold, it de-leveraged more domestically and debtors were in a position to refinance. It is worth noting, as was referenced by a number of contributors, that an independent report by Professor FitzGerald found that NAMA was broadly successful and the Comptroller and Auditor General last week reported that NAMA achieved higher returns than originally projected. Had NAMA sat on assets indefinitely, other charges would have been made, with people asking why NAMA was not trying to realise and pay back the money the State had invested. NAMA was established with a specific mandate. It made a significant social and economic contribution. It achieved a €5.6 billion surplus. It supported the delivery of more than 45,500 houses, contributed to Dublin Docklands regeneration and a number of houses and lands were transferred to the Land Development Agency, which will contribute to the delivery of further houses in the years ahead. Some contributors asked about pre-legislative scrutiny. I understand the Tánaiste has written to the Chair of the joint committee on finance to respond comprehensively. If any of the Deputies on that committee did not get the response, we will be happy to ensure they do. The Department of Finance will continue the oversight and governance throughout the final drawdown and completion. A number of people mentioned the number of staff. Eight staff will work in the resolution unit to work through the remaining matters. This will not include the current CEO, who is an NTMA employee. He was always an NTMA employee and will return to the NTMA on an individual contract. Deputy O'Callaghan mentioned ISIF investments. The residual activity from NAMA and the IBRC is ringfenced in the NTMA and will not be part of the broader NTMA portfolio. Deputy Healy-Rae will be pleased to note that the Bill does not contain any provisions relating to staff, including terms and conditions. Staff who were assigned to NAMA were originally employed by the NTMA and, therefore, there is no legislative transfer of staff. PTSB was raised. One of the Government's objectives in regard to PTSB was to maximise the value achieved from the sale to recover taxpayer funds and deploy these to more productive purposes. The BAWAG has confirmed it will operate PTSB as a bank with long-term and clear objectives and this is an opportunity to present a credible challenger to AIB and Bank of Ireland. Its plan is to maintain a meaningful branch footprint. A number of Deputies referred to the importance of having competition in the banking sector, which is a consideration for the Minister for Finance. I cannot comment on individual cases as that would not be right or proper. I do not have knowledge of individual cases Deputies have raised but I can confirm that there will be full continuity. Nobody will be prejudiced by the transfer of activities. The NTMA is simply stepping into the role of NAMA. Everybody's rights will be preserved, and equally everybody's obligations will also be preserved. On the query from Deputy McGuinness, I will undertake to follow up with officials and respond to him directly. A number of Deputies spoke about funds and the funds industry, and portrayed funds as something negative to be investing in in this country. As Minister with responsibility for financial services, I know first hand the importance of the funds industry to this country. The funds industry is very much a pillar of the financial services sector of our economy through funds administration, asset management, risk and compliance and legal and financial advisories. It provides 19,500 and 35,500 direct and indirect jobs. It is contributing approximately a billion euro per annum in taxation to our economy. Of those jobs, 46% are outside the capital. When people speak about funds, they portray them in a very negative way which is not a true or fair reflection of the facts. In terms of the need for housing, we know we need to spend, on average, €20 billion per annum to ensure that we construct the number of houses that are needed on an annual basis to ensure we bring house prices down to an affordable level, we increase supply to meet demand and we ensure rents fall to a more affordable level. One of the critical components of that is to ensure that international and private funds provide investment. It may sound as if we are playing to a certain audience but that is an appropriate way to characterise funds. The Bill represents a significant step in the State's post-crisis normalisation. It acknowledges the substantial work carried out by NAMA and the special liquidators of the IBRC and provides a clear and efficient structure to bring remaining matters to a conclusion and completion. I commend the Bill to the House.