Fine Gael TDs explain absence from PAC’s Nama hearings

The four Fine Gael members of the Public Accounts Committee have said their absence from Tuesday’s hearings on Nama’s controversial Project Eagle happened as a result of chance rather than design.

None of the four Fine Gael TDs was present for the six-hour meeting which heard evidence from three senior directors of Nama. The four TDs are Peter Burke (Longford-Westmeath), Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal), Josepha Madigan (Dublin South) and Noel Rock (Dublin North-West).

One of the four questioned whether or not there was much more to be gleaned from the “battle between Nama and the C&AG” over whether the price achieved for the Project Eagle properties was the best one.

At the hearing, Nama directors defended the sales process and price achieved for Project Eagle, where 800 properties owned by Northern developers was sold for £1.23 billion (€1.6 billion).

The three directors – William Soffe, Brian McEnery and Oliver Ellingham – disputed the conclusion of Comptroller and Auditor General Seamus Murphy that the sale cost the taxpayer a probable £190 million.

Mr McEnery, the director in charge of the Nama audit committee, was questioned by Sinn Féin’s David Cullinane about his Fine Gael connections; he was a former director of elections for Michael Finucane in Limerick East.

The PAC normally sits on a Thursday and not a Tuesday. That is one of the reasons attributed by Fine Gael for non-attendance.

Constituency commitments

Ms Madigan said she was sick all day Tuesday and was not able to attend. She said it was the first PAC meting she had missed.

Mr Burke was in Bratislava, the Slovak capital, as part of a delegation from the Finance Committee and Budget Oversight Committee. He said the visit had been arranged before the extra Tuesday sitting of the PAC had been scheduled.

Mr Farrell said he had constituency commitments on Tuesday morning and was in the Dáil in the afternoon, but too late to be able to participate in the PAC meeting.

“When the Dáil is not sitting, as on Tuesday morning, I have constituency commitments. When I arrived into Leinster House, the opening statements had already been made and it would have been too late to participate in the meeting,” he said.

Mr Rock also said he was involved with constituency matters and had also attended a meeting of the enterprise committee, of which he is also a member.

He was surprised to hear that no Fine Gael TD was present and accepted that there might be better coordination between members.

He said that having sat through the initial session, he was “not entirely convinced there is a huge amount more that can be gleaned from the PAC conflict between Nama and the C&AG. It seems to be a battler over interpretation.”

Three Fianna Fáil TDs – chairman Seán Fleming, Bobby Aylward and Shane Cassells – were present as were the two Sinn Féin members, Mary Lou McDonald and David Cullinane. Alan Kelly of Labour, Social Democrats TD Catherine Murphy and Independent Catherine Connolly also attended.