I am glad to get the opportunity to say a few words. As many others have said, those ten years were an awful time in the lives of many people in our country. Many people lost their homes and lands and, worse than that, they lost their marriages and some of them lost their children. They lost everything. Some even lost their lives. It was a terrible time and NAMA was a word many people regretted and resented. I refer to the liquidators, vulture funds and the things that happened. As I said, homes were taken. The thing I worried about most was that there was no court order in many cases. Liquidators and receivers took it upon themselves to close the book on people and sell their properties. There are many instances where the former owners attempted to buy back their property from the receiver but they were not allowed to do so because the receiver had favourites to whom to sell it to - maybe to their own families. That needs to be followed up. Where a property or a home was sold and there was no court order, that needs to be investigated because that was totally wrong. They should have been engaged with and it should have gone through the courts to ensure it was proper. I cannot understand how a deed could be taken from someone and passed on to someone else. Were new deeds written or what happened that new people could take over a person's land while that person still had the deed and the courts never took them? I cannot understand that. Like many others have said, the universal social charge was brought in at the time of financial difficulty to try to keep the country running. There is no need for it now and many working-class people are still suffering. I do not understand why the Government is closing the book on NAMA. I am worried that there are still people who may not have been dealt with properly and that we will be closing some legal gap for them to come back and fight their cases and maybe get their property, or the value of it, back. I am worried about it. I am not sure about it. Like Deputy Mattie McGrath, I thank Deputy John McGuinness for the fearless way he dealt with many people as Chair of the Committee of Public Accounts and the tough questions that had to be asked and answered. I appreciate him for being straightforward and as honest as he could, regardless of where it left him. I have a special hatred for vulture funds. There should be no place for them. If people had engaged or dealt with the banks to get loans or mortgages, the banks should still be looking for the repayments and not vulture funds because the vulture funds did desperate things to people. They forced and blackguarded people and did everything in the world to people. I regret and resent that. I will always remember it as a desperate, undemocratic time in the lives of people all over the country. I hope that the fact there was no court order in many instances will be dealt with because many people will not be dealt with fairly until that has been tested. Many people were left behind and dealt with wrongly where there was no court order. Their places were put up for sale with a certain auction date, perhaps not even advertised publicly enough. Their places were sold behind their backs in many instances, without going through any court or any judge making an order that their properties, houses or land could be sold. I hope some day those people will get fairness and retribution for what happened to them. I am sorry for the people who lost their lives and marriages. Losing property is one thing, but families and lives are much more precious than anything material. So much happened that I am not sure why the Government is doing this. There is another aspect. Who decided that this chairman, CEO or whatever he will be, will get more than €400,000? Why does it have to be that amount of money? No man or woman in the State is worth that kind of money. When I think of all the people who suffered financially, it might have been for small sums of money when we look back on it. This is a massive sum of money to be giving to one man and making a job for him. The Government will not get much praise for this because it is another big job for one of the boys and I could not stand over that. I could not vote for that and I will not be voting for it either. I cannot see that it is fair on the people who suffered over the years, especially in the past ten or 15 years.

Sentiment score: -0.10