Discounted developments replace old-fashioned national assets

DAIL SKETCH:YOUNG PEOPLE are our greatest national asset.

That’s what our politicians used to say when stuck for a trite phrase in a sticky situation. It was always a great fallback line.

But not any more.

Today, our greatest national assets include luxury hotels in the Persian Gulf, vulgar villas in Florida and corner shops in Bulgaria.

The Government has set up a special agency to cherish them, for they are the abandoned children of the financially promiscuous and greedily reckless high-priests of Ireland’s Tiger Economy.

The new body is called the National Asset Management Agency. Nama, for short.

Some very clever people will run it on behalf of the people of Ireland. Taoiseach Brian Cowen is sure they will do a very good job, because that’s what they told him.

But he didn’t know much else about it when faced with some awkward questions from the Opposition about the value and dubious provenance of these assets.

“Nothing has been decided” he said, refusing to go into detail.

Any questions would be answered in the afternoon, away from the Dáil, when the Minister for Finance and a brace of business boffins would explain all at the NTMA.

(That’s the National Treasury Management Agency, affectionately known as “Auntie May” among people who work in high finance. They think this is hilarious.) Brian Lenihan revealed that he is going to embark shortly on a grand tour of Europe with Auntie May. Once they pack the steamer trucks, they’ll be away to sell the story of Irish fiscal rectitude to the number crunchers in the fleshpots.

Peter Bacon is one of the business boffins who was at yesterday’s press conference in the NTMA about the Nama. He specialises in being wheeled out by governments in times of economic crisis.

The once-popular parlour game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon is still played in Fianna Fáil, but instead of the American actor, they use Peter’s name instead.

Goes like this: My name is Brian Cowen. I met Barack Obama in The White House. President Obama is from Hawaii, where the detective series, Hawaii Five O was set, starring Jack Lord. Jack Lord shares a surname with a female journalist from The Irish Times. This journalist attended the launch of the Bacon Reports – one, two and three – written by Peter Bacon.

Bingo! You see, that’s only five degrees of separation from Peter Bacon for Brian Cowen.

Never mind.

Taoiseach Cowen couldn’t stop talking about Nama yesterday, when he had to face some awkward questions from the Opposition about the precise value and dubious provenance of these assets.

He couldn’t, because nothing had been decided. Mind you, Eamon Ryan was able to go into the House in the afternoon and inform all and sundry that 30 per cent of these assets are abroad, with about half of them in Northern Ireland.

The people running Nama will have a difficult job. They have to take custody of the various ill-judged developments and vanity projects built by developers who can’t pay back the borrowings that financed them. These bad loans are endangering the country’s banking system, and economic viability.

And then there’s Dickie Rock. And Sonny Knowles. Not to mention Twink. And Uncle Gaybo.

They’re National Assets. What’s Peter Bacon going to do about them? Because it turned out that Nama will also be adopting the good loans on the banks books. The good assets.

This has worried a lot of people.

At Leaders’ Questions, Brian Cowen and his Cabinet seemed much more relaxed than they appeared on Budget day. Perhaps, having survived the night, the morning papers and a ministerial blitz of the nation’s local radio stations, they felt confident they could sell Lenihan’s harsh budgetary package.

Brian Cowen spoke of hard choices. The Opposition spoke of soft options.

In the corridors, deputies talked of seething middle Ireland. On the Government side, they consoled themselves with the thought that “the coping classes” are not a lobby group, and are unlikely to rise up like the pensioners of the public service.

It fell to Pat Rabbitte to lighten up the proceedings. He was so good in his speech attacking the Green Party, Labour had his performance up on YouTube within the hour: “Rabbitte eats Greens”. He got stuck into Mary White, Paul Gogarty – “rolls around the floor at public meetings and asks Senator Frances Fitzgerald to tickle his belly”, Trevor Sargent – “Minister of State with responsibility for parsnips and organic tomatoes” and John Gormley – “he cycles to work, even though two Garda cars, one carrying the Minister’s lunch box of Ryvita and tomato, follow him as he does so”. Brian Cowen bit his lip and managed to keep a straight face during Rabbitte’s routine, but Lenihan the Younger went into paroxysms.

Conor laughed a little too much, given that Pat was lampooning his partners in Government. If Deputy Rabbitte keeps up the high standard, Peter Bacon and Nama will have to adopt him too.