C&AG and Nama set to clash at Public Accounts Committee

We have been so excited about the prospect of the clash between the C&AG and Nama today that we almost invited Jim McGuinness and Dara Ó Sé to write guest columns.

They could spell out the tactics, the defensive formations and match-ups and generally gee up supporters from both sides.

For us who wear anoraks for a living, the clash between Comptroller and Auditor General Seamus McCarthy and Nama chairman Frank Daly at the Public Accounts Committee will be as intense as that between Lee Keegan and Diarmuid Connolly on Saturday.

There has been no quarter given by either side in the run-up. Of course, it will be unfailingly polite with no raised voices. That said, during all my time in Leinster House I can't recall any State agency striking such a defiantly refusenik attitude to a report from the Comptroller.

Here is our report on it.

Within nano-seconds of the C&AG's report on Project Eagle being made public earlier this month, Nama went on the attack. Project Eagle was nearly the entire Northern Ireland portfolio on Nama's books. It was bundled up into one package and sold to the American company Cerberus for £1.2 billion sterling (€1.6 billion).

The C&AG report concluded millions of euro might have been lost to the Exchequer because the discounts arrived at were too deep. It also raised questions about the 800 properties being sold in one lot, and it criticised the process for not being open enough to the possibility of other bidders.

Nama has essentially said, though not in so many words, the Office of the C&AG, did not have recourse to professional valuers. Therefore, its basis of calculation was misconceived and misconstrued. It relied on a battery of other opinions it commissioned to bolster its argument.

We have heard a lot from Nama, but have yet to hear from Mr McCarthy, who is highly regarded.

Nama seems to be on shakier ground with its protests about Frank Cushnahan having no knowledge or influence. Nama was one of the world's biggest property companies for a while and did need to keep its cards close to its chest. But already a small number of former employees have been flushed out for disclosing confidential information to developers.

Cushnahan's actions seem to have been flagrant. The finder's fee and the offshore monies are problems. So is the fact that no eyebrows were raised by Tughans and Brown Rudnick shifting to a new bidder after their old bidder was excluded from the race. Nor was the fact that some of the Northern advisory body's meetings were held in the office of the Belfast solicitors.

The notion of “arm’s length” did not seem to be all that strong.

No matter how much Frank Daly and Nama protest, Cushnahan presents a big problem for the agency. As Karl Rove said: When you are explaining you are losing.

Minister for foot and mouth

Wow, that was a spectacular blooper by Minister for Jobs Mary Mitchell O’Connor yesterday.

The Indo had reported high-flying Irish graduates living abroad would be given an extraordinary incentive to return home.

This formed the basis of a pre-budget submission by Mitchell O’Connor.

The returning earls - those highly successful ‘goys’ earning over €75,000 a year - would be given a special effective tax rate of 30 per cent, leaving us bumpkins and village idiots who stayed at home still paying the effective marginal rate of just over 50 per cent.

Such a suggestion was especially sensitive given the pay and productivity disputes we have had in the past month. The latest to threaten a strike are gardaí who look like going ahead with a real dispute in November, as opposed to a blue flu.

This has the potential to be serious, given there is a specific prohibition in the criminal code on gardai going out on strike.

The prospect of such a strike is our main story today.

Mitchell O’Connor’s scheme was hare-brained, and the inequality of it was obvious.

Little wonder that Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin pounced on it in Leaders' Questions yesterday, asking the Taoiseach was he serious about it and describing it as "bananas".

After a bit of bluster about no decision taken on the budget, it was obvious Enda Kenny knew he was on a loser defending a silly idea that was neither fair nor logical.

And, by Dad, did he dump on it. He said it would be “unfair and discriminatory, of course’’ if returning emigrants paid a different rate of tax simply because they had come back to live in Ireland”.

Here is our report on the exchanges in the Dáil.