Control of dormant accounts queried

THE ROLE of the National Treasury Management Agency in controlling the dormant accounts fund has been questioned in the Dail.

Independent TD Shane Ross said the Government should not assume the money was safe in the hands of the agency. Sharply criticising the NTMA, he said successive taoisigh and ministers for finance paid consistent tribute to its work “without knowing what they are talking about. They have not made a proper analysis of what goes on, as the results produced by the NTMA with this fund are laughable”.

He said the results it produced with other funds “are nothing like as good as its spin. It is receiving these funds, but in gauging its performance one should not measure it against the National Pensions Reserve Fund, although some like that comparison.”

Mr Ross was speaking during the ongoing debate on the Dormant Accounts (Amendment) Bill, which dissolves the dormant accounts board and transfers powers to the Minister for the Environment. The fund includes money from unclaimed bank, building society, post office and similar accounts. Since its establishment nine years ago, €626 million has been transferred to the fund with €25 million in interest rates. Some €218 million was reclaimed by account holders.

Mr Ross asked what the infatuation was of this Government and its predecessor with the NTMA, which was a “State monopoly, a super-quango full of people appointed, continuously and historically, on the same basis as those appointed to the quango we are now abolishing”.

He said NTMA officials repeatedly appeared before Oireachtas committees and told Cabinet Ministers “who know no better – that it beat the average Irish pension fund by a certain percentage.

“What they do not realise is that the average Irish pension fund is the worst performer in the world and the NTMA is setting itself against a benchmark that is so bad a babe in arms would have beaten it. A monkey throwing darts at a target would beat the benchmark.”

Fine Gael Dublin Central TD Paschal Donohoe called for a review of the decision not to publish the dormant accounts inspection reports.