This Bill provides us with an opportunity to reflect on what NAMA was, why it existed, what it could have been, and what lessons we should learn. The word "NAMA" immediately brings to mind one of the darkest periods in recent Irish history and reminds us that when the rich and greedy gamble at the casino, it is ordinary people who pick up the bill. It also reminds us of an era when brutal austerity was inflicted on people by Fine Gael as a direct result of the actions of dodgy bankers and cowboy developers. We should also not forget that NAMA represented a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reshape our housing system for the benefit of ordinary people; an opportunity that was shamefully wasted. Cailleadh an deis seo. Bunchloch dhínit an duine is ea an tithíocht. When the Anglo Tapes came out in 2013, the public got a glimpse behind the curtain of those at the top. Anglo Irish Bank executives were in stitches laughing as they discussed their collapsing bank. They joked about running rings around an incompetent regulator and straddling the Irish public with generational debt. John Bowe, Anglo's head of capital markets, spoke about never paying back the taxpayer and in his words, "pulling made up figures out of his arse". It was all fun and games for those at the top but it was no laughing matter for ordinary people. Jobs were lost, homes were repossessed and emigration returned. Hundreds of people lost their lives to suicide as a result of the economic downturn. The consequence of the recession for these families who lost loved ones could not have been more severe. Houses and apartments should be looked at as homes and not as assets. Treating housing as an investment opportunity is what got us into the mess of the most recent recession. NAMA was the Government's plan to tidy up the mess to sell off thousands of homes and land-banks for knock-down prices to the highest bidder, taking lands and homes off the bankers and handing them over to vulture funds. It was a Fine Gael solution to a Fianna Fáil problem. The civil servants in NAMA achieved what was set out in their statutory remit. I commend their hard work and competence in a time of immense pressure. The problem is the politicians in charge of coming up with what this remit was and their lack of any foresight or imagination. NAMA will have delivered over €5 billion back to the Exchequer by the time it is wound up. Ireland is not currently suffering from a lack of money. There is nearly €39 billion in cash sitting under the management of the NTMA. What we are suffering from is a chronic lack of affordable housing. There are a record 17,517 people living in homeless emergency accommodation. Shamefully, 5,571 of them are children. The median price for a house in Dublin is now €500,000. The average rent for a two-bed apartment in Ireland is over €2,000 a month. Home ownership is becoming a pipe dream for most workers on normal wages. People are struggling just to keep a roof over their head. NAMA took on 60,000 individual assets. Included in this were huge land-banks capable of delivering thousands of affordable homes. While the economic crisis subsided the housing crisis accelerated. In the midst of this housing crisis, NAMA continued its fire sale of desperately needed land and homes. It could, and should, have changed tack but the Government sat on its hands. Homes should have been turned into social and affordable housing. Land should have been developed as housing that people can afford. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to shift housing away from speculators was not taken. Speculation was doubled down on and the vulture funds made billions of euro. In 2014, the vulture funds began to make their move. Project Sand saw a pool of residential loans worth €1.1 billion bought by Lone Star and Oaktree Capital. The Project Stone loan portfolio, worth €6.85 billion, was acquired by CarVal, Lone Star and Deutsche Bank. Project Eagle sold €5.6 billion-worth of commercial loans to Cerberus. The vulture funds were here to stay, buying up loans, buying up homes and pumping up prices. Cerberus alone has seen the value of its assets in Ireland increase by €1.63 billion. Tens of thousands of homes are owned by these funds. People who have had their mortgage sold from underneath them know what a nightmare this can be with exorbitant interest rates, faceless companies and endless debt that they often cannot get out of. There are real people suffering very real consequences because of these political decisions. I recently met a renter in Galway city being evicted from her home of 20 years by one of these vulture funds. Can you imagine being evicted from your home of 20 years by some faceless vulture fund? The former Fine Gael finance Minister, Michael Noonan, defended these vulture funds in 2016 when, talking about the funds that effectively were brought in and welcomed into Ireland in this context, he said that "vultures provide a very good service in the ecology through cleaning up dead animals that are littered across the landscape". This sums up the entire NAMA episode. Ordinary hard-working people were treated like fools by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael and like cash cows by developers, bankers and vultures. As what is left of NAMA is folded into the National Treasury Management Agency, we should also look at the operating practices of the NTMA. Section 40 of the National Treasury Management Agency (Amendment) Act 2014 provides that the National Treasury Management Agency "shall determine, monitor and keep under review an investment strategy for the assets" of the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund, ISIF. ISIF still has investments in companies operating in the illegally occupied Palestinian territories. This is part of the investment strategy decided by the NTMA. It flies in the face of our obligations under international law and the Genocide Convention. The illegal occupation in Palestine is intensifying. A few weeks ago, Aws al-Naasan, a 14-year-old boy, was murdered while he stood at the gate of his secondary school in the West Bank. He was shot in the head by an Israeli settler. This was part of a wave of settler violence in the Occupied West Bank primarily targeted at schools and children.

Sentiment score: -0.12

This is relevant. This is absolutely relevant. The Bill is transferring NAMA into the NTMA. I am questioning the record of the NTMA in terms of how it is managing public funds through ISIF. The NTMA is using public money-----

Sentiment score: -0.02

Yes, it is absolutely related to the Bill. I raised it at pre-legislative scrutiny. I am putting in an amendment on Committee Stage of the Bill. The NTMA is managing ISIF funds. It has some of our public money in companies that are operating illegally in the occupied territories in the West Bank. I am referring here in the Dáil to some of the repercussions of that. A 14-year-old boy was killed at the school gates by Israeli settlers and yet our public money, managed by the NTMA with Government approval, is being used to fund companies operating illegally in contravention of international law in the West Bank. It is absolutely relevant to this Bill and the NTMA. I raised it previously in pre-legislative scrutiny. I am giving the Minister of State notice that I will be raising it on Committee Stage and tabling an amendment on this. It is absolutely unacceptable that Ireland is still investing in companies that are taking part in this illegal occupation, and doing that through the NTMA. This Bill is about transferring NAMA into the NTMA. The Irish taxpayers do not want their money invested in companies profiting from stolen Palestinian land. The NTMA must take immediate action to fully divest from all these companies without delay. It appears that Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil seem hell-bent on repeating the mistakes of the past. The handouts for property developers are back, the tax cuts for vulture funds are not going anywhere and property prices have gone far beyond their Celtic tiger peak. Lessons must be learned from NAMA. The market will not come to the rescue of the housing crisis. The State must take a leading role in affordable home building. Finally, apartments and houses should never be treated as speculative assets; they are homes. Before I conclude, I want to talk about the pre-legislative scrutiny report that was done by the committee. It is relevant. Why was pre-legislative scrutiny brought in to the Oireachtas? It was brought in post the crash. It was one of the learnings from the crash to make our legislative process stronger. It is regrettable, in his opening remarks, that the Minister of State did not address the committee's recommendations. It is regrettable that six recommendations in the all-party report were not taken on board. In fact, the analysis done by the library and research service, in its excellent Bills digest, shows that the six recommendations were not properly taken on board and, in fact, four of them were not taken on board at all. Deputy Nash referenced them, but I will refer particularly to recommendations 5 and 6 of the committee. Recommendation 5 is that the Minister for Finance provides a table outlining the value of NAMA-managed properties at time of their sale, compared to their current or most recent valuation. That would provide important information in terms of the learnings from NAMA. The committee and the Oireachtas, but also the public, should be provided with that information. Recommendation 6, which is key, is that a report be commissioned detailing a constructive and critical examination of learnings from NAMA and how to best reflect those learnings in the future operations of the NTMA, the Land Development Agency and any other relevant bodies. These are good recommendations from the all-party committee. I urge the Minister of State to take them on board, either through amendments to the legislation or, as I would welcome, if there are other ways that he can provide that information without requiring amendments to the legislation.

Sentiment score: -0.00