Labour's proposal on monitoring Nama rejected

THE DÁIL yesterday rejected a Labour proposal that an independent committee be set up to monitor Nama.

The proposal was made by party finance spokeswoman Joan Burton at a meeting of the Oireachtas committee on finance and the public service, which is considering the committee stage of the Nama legislation at a sitting in the Dáil chamber.

Ms Burton’s amendment advocated the appointment of “an oversight committee consisting of specified persons, not being members of the Houses of the Oireachtas, to report to the Dáil every 30 days on the operation of the Act and the activities of Nama”. Ms Burton envisaged that the committee would have in the region of eight to 12 members with the necessary capacity and expertise.

“The critical thing is that it would provide a mechanism for a flow of regular information to this House, and then to our citizens,” she added.

Ms Burton said Nama was essentially a bad bank which would seek to sell, hold, or in some other way deal with the bad assets underlying the distressed loans.

Such a committee would be able to say if credit was flowing into the economy and whether the issue of mortgage repossessions was being dealt with in an appropriate way by the banks as part of the Nama process, said Ms Burton.

Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan said one of the difficulties he had with the tenor of the debate was the suggestion that the board of Nama would not be up to the job.

“In my view the most important issue we have to concentrate our minds on is to ensure that we do have a board that exercises an oversight function relating to Nama,” he added. He said he did not have any difficulty with board nominees being examined by an Oireachtas committee.

The Minister also said he would not object to “a form of process audit or process auditor” monitoring the agency.

Mr Lenihan said a 30-day limit on reporting to the Oireachtas over a 10-year period would impose a substantial burden on the agency.

However, he did accept that the proposed biannual report was “too summary a reporting obligation”.

A shorter period was advisable, and he would suggest a quarterly report, he added.

The Labour amendment was defeated by seven votes to five. Only members of the committee can vote on amendments, although all TDs can contribute to the debate.

Fine Gael finance spokesman Richard Bruton said he believed the oversight role should be conducted by members of the Oireachtas rather than outside people.

They could not, he added, delegate responsibility to the chairman and chief executive, saying “bye, bye and see you in 10 years’ time and tell us did you make the five billion euro profit”.

He added: “Look at what happened with the Central Bank and the Financial Regulator.

“That was, effectively, the way we oversaw them.” He added that they had become defenders of what was going wrong in the banks, “as if they were too scared, like Lord Denning, to face up to the appalling vista that, maybe, this banking system was wrong”.

Mr Lenihan said he was open in principle to the idea of an Oireachtas committee dealing with Nama, although he did not think the House should legislate for it. However, he did have a difficulty with the idea that a House committee should have some form of executive oversight role.

Mr Bruton warned that an Oireachtas committee without professional forensic skills would be worthless.

Arthur Morgan (SF) said the issue of scrutiny of Nama was absolutely critical. Public confidence had been partially shattered, not least because of the Fás scandal, he added. A problem with the Bill was that many of Nama’s officers were quite restricted in how they reported to the Oireachtas, said Mr Morgan.