Nama plan falling apart - Lee

FINE GAEL has accused Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan of “hysterical attacks” on its deputy leader, Richard Bruton, to divert attention from flaws in the Nama plan.

New Fine Gael TD George Lee said the Minister’s approach was a sure sign that “the Fianna Fáil attempt to bail out their banker and developer supporters via the Nama gamble” was beginning to fall apart.

“Fianna Fáil wants to transfer responsibility for dealing with toxic loans from the banks that made them, and the investors who funded them, to the Irish taxpayer.

“Many professional investors, who fuelled the crisis by recklessly giving tens of billions of euro to the banks without proper due diligence, could walk away scot-free at the expense of taxpayers. This is irresponsible, reckless and unfair,” said Mr Lee.

Nama – the National Asset Management Agency – is the so-called “bad bank” being established by the Government to buy toxic loans from lenders.

Mr Lee said the Nama project had been guided by the panic induced by last year’s bank crises, by baseless projections of a sharp rebound in land and property prices, and by a distorted and narrow Fianna Fáil definition of the national interest.

“Almost every independent expert in the land shares Fine Gael’s opposition to the way the Government is going about solving this crisis. Yet Fianna Fáil is asking us to trust them on this one. But this is the party whose leader repeatedly assured young Irish families back in 2005 and 2006 that house prices then were based on ‘strong economic fundamentals’.

“We now know that at that time he was receiving exactly the opposite advice from the world’s foremost experts on house prices and banking stability at the IMF. Tens, if not hundreds of thousands of those families now find themselves trapped in negative equity and unemployment. Why should the public trust them now?” asked Mr Lee.

He added that Richard Bruton had in recent years exposed the irresponsibility of the Government’s approach to benchmarking, the policies of Brian Cowen that had pumped up the debt-driven property bubble and the folly of Mr Lenihan’s attempt to tax the country back to economic recovery.

He added that Mr Bruton and Fine Gael had been right on all these issues on the economy, while Fianna Fáil had accused them of being unpatriotic in pointing out their failings.

“Now that Richard is exposing the huge ‘double or quits’ gamble on bankers and developers that Fianna Fáil is proposing to take with the Irish economy they are trying something similar again,” said Mr Lee.

“They are wrong. Brian Lenihan, like so many times in the past, is also wrong,” he said.

Fianna Fáil TD Ned O’Keeffe last night pledged support for Mr Lenihan on Nama and said that in years to come it would be seen as one of the best plans ever put in place by an Irish Government.

“Of course there are questions about the exact details but it seems to me to be the best course of action and I think the Minister and his department deserve praise for drawing up this plan. It has already been approved by the European Central Bank and I strongly believe it will have a very positive impact on the economy in the medium term,” said Mr O’Keeffe.