THE FORMER head of the National Treasury Management Agency Michael Somers has raised questions about the Government’s latest strategy to deal with Anglo Irish Bank.
Dr Somers raised the issue at a private session of the Fine Gael parliamentary party at Faithlegg House Hotel in Co Waterford yesterday.
Party leader Enda Kenny said Dr Somers had made the point that, following the Government decision on Tuesday, there were now two State agencies involved in the winding-down of property loans.
Mr Kenny said there was now complete confusion as the residual end of Anglo Irish and Nama were both involved in sorting out Anglo’s impaired loans.
“It seems as if there is confused thinking about this because there is a very substantial amount of money being paid to lawyers and accountants and so on in transferring assets to Nama.”
Mr Kenny said the question arose as to why two State agencies were dealing with Anglo wind downs at such an enormous cost to the taxpayer.
“The Government hasn’t a plan to deal with Anglo. They have gone three times to the European Commission and have been turned down on three occasions. The decision we had on Tuesday is a half-baked plan which doesn’t save the taxpayer any money, which costs the same as before, which cost we don’t yet know, and doesn’t deliver any certainty to the markets.”
Mr Kenny said that if the Government had accepted the Fine Gael suggestion 20 months ago, that Anglo should be wound down in an orderly fashion, it would have provided certainty for the markets, provided a real saving for the taxpayer and would have added credibility to the country’s banking strategy.
“The Minister for Finance has been proven to be wrong. While I have given Brian Lenihan as Minister for Finance credit in general for his approach to the fiscal policy of the country his banking strategy has been a monumental disaster,” added Mr Kenny.
Speaking at a press conference after a two-day meeting of his parliamentary party Mr Kenny said that as Nama was a legal entity the country could be stuck with it but he pointed out that Fine Gael had opposed it from its conception and had voted against it in the Dáil.
He said that the issue raised by Dr Somers showed that there was confused thinking about how to deal with the Anglo problem and meanwhile enormous costs were being run up by lawyers transferring toxic assets and properties from Anglo to Nama.
Mr Kenny also expressed concern at comments from the European Commission suggesting there was an intention to bring about a harmonisation of the tax base in respect of corporate taxation across the union. He pledged that Fine Gael would oppose any such move as it would be bad for investment in this country and bad for the economy.
“We fought long and hard as a government to introduce the 12.5 per cent corporation tax rate back in the 1994-97 period but also in respect of the Lisbon referendum it was made perfectly clear that taxation matters were individual to each country.”
Mr Kenny said that during the meeting there had been a presentation on public sector reform by Richard Bruton who made it clear that there was no desire to impose a negative agenda on the public service. He said trust was needed to get the kind of change necessary so that public servants could have real job satisfaction and citizens could get quality of service.
