Madam, – All this talk about Nama and other schemes to help the banks makes me wonder if anyone – our politicians included – realises what a billion is. We hear talk of Nama costing between €30 billion and €40 billion. There is a lot of leeway in that figure. For example, if the figure were pared down by just €0.2 billion the difference would be €200 million – enough to cover a lot of other programmes which are crying out for funding.
I make no comment on whether or not we should make an effort to clean up the banking system. I just point out that people are being very careless with figures in talking about the strategy. Were he alive today, Benjamin Franklin might say, “A half-billion saved is 500 million earned.” – Yours, etc,