Fianna Fáil found wanting on key question of trust, says Burton

LABOUR:THE NAMA legislation all comes down to a question of trust, Labour finance spokeswoman Joan Burton said.

“Do we trust Fianna Fáil and the Minister for Finance to head up the largest property firm on the planet?” She said that “like one of the characters in Alice in Wonderland, this legislation requires the public to believe six impossible things before breakfast, all of which come down to a question of trust.”

She added: “Do we trust Fianna Fáil not to bail out the bankers and the borrowers? Do we trust the Minister who claimed that the blanket guarantee he introduced for the financial institutions last September would be the cheapest bank rescue in the world?

“Do we trust a Taoiseach who pleaded that Ireland’s economic fundamentals were sound when it was plain to see we were teetering on the brink of disaster? Do we trust a Government that inflated a property bubble, ignored all advice to curtail property-based tax incentives and buried its head in the sand when the house of cards collapsed?”

During her speech to the Dáil, Ms Burton warned that “while Nama is finding a temporary home under the auspices of the National Treasury Management Agency [NTMA], the reality is that Nama is a cuckoo in the NTMA’s nest because it is actually subject to the Minister’s rule and diktat.

“The Bill makes it clear that the NTMA will have no functions whatsoever in the governance, direction or management of Nama,” she added.

She accused the Minister of having “a nerve” to “criticise other parties who have nothing like the Fianna Fáil track record of collaboration and collusion with some of those who have brought the Irish banking system low and in doing so have put a debt on the head of every man, woman and child in this country for this generation and the next”.

She was equally critical of his “attempt to cost what he says are the purported proposals of the Labour Party when he does not provide us with costings in respect of his own proposals”.

She asked: “Where is the business plan? Where are the projected cashflows of Nama over its seven- to 10-year lifespan.”

Mr Lenihan intervened and said, “this is the second stage debate and the information the deputy has requested will be provided before the end of the debate”.

Ms Burton, a Dublin West constituency colleague of Mr Lenihan, said “what the Minister is asking us to do is to trust Fianna Fáil” with a €54 billion tag. “I do not trust Fianna Fáil and neither do most of the people out on the street.” She noted “the word ‘developers’ has disappeared from the lexicon and that the ‘developers’ have become ‘borrowers’”.

Ms Burton said she was “not convinced the Bill will do very much for the 450,000 people who have lost their jobs”.