OPPOSITION PARTY proposals on the financial crisis have come under attack from Minister for the Environment John Gormley in advance of today’s Green Party meeting on the proposed National Asset Management Agency (Nama).
Several hundred members are expected to attend the meeting in Athlone which will discuss the party’s approach to Nama, particularly in the light of changes to the legislation announced this week. A further meeting is to be held on October 10th to finalise the party’s approach.
“If you look at the proposals being put [forward] by the Opposition, they don’t add up,” Mr Gormley said yesterday.
“The Fine Gael proposals have been severely criticised by Garret FitzGerald and Alan Dukes. The Labour Party proposals have no costings: they propose a new body known as ART – the Assets Recovery Trust, which is, as far as I can see, Nama by another name, and then they propose nationalisation. And I don’t see how the Opposition parties’ proposals actually protect the taxpayer. In fact, the cost to the taxpayer is probably more when you look at nationalisation,” he said.
At today’s meeting, he would “explain the undoubted wins that we have gained through the negotiation process with our colleagues in government”. This was part of a continuing process, “because there will be further changes at committee stage”.
Looking ahead to next Wednesday’s announcement in the Dáil on the value Nama will put on the loans it is taking over, he continued: “We will be able to gauge very quickly at that stage the valuation methodology and the extent to which risk-sharing is going to protect the taxpayer, so there is quite a lot to be discussed.
“A lot of members are saying to us that they feel, particularly in relation to planning and development, that what we have done this week has been of enormous benefit to the State and we’ll continue that because it goes to the very heart of our own philosophy.”
Minister for Communications Eamon Ryan said: “One of the things we want to do is protect education . . . investment in the future is not what you cut in these difficult times, it actually gets us out of the difficulties we’re in.”
He said that, in securing modifications to the Nama legislation, the Green Party had taken away the “speculative impulse” in the area of property. “It should have been done 30 years ago – we’ve finally done it.
“But also in Nama, when it’s up and running, you will actually have a very large land-bank that it will have control over, and you can actually use that as an agency . . . to keep house prices down. So there is a two-way mechanism, there is a supply opportunity in Nama as well as a speculative constraint . . . we think is going to make housing much more affordable and much better planned.”
