First, I want to acknowledge, given the headline topic we are discussing, that NAMA played an important stabilising role at a moment of national crisis. I was there at the time and was involved in the Government that made the decisions. I saw the logic and supported its establishment at the time under the circumstances that were forced on people. However, it is also clear that NAMA's record is mixed, due to what were largely Government decisions. I acknowledge that NAMA had an independent mandate but it was given a mandate and terms of reference and because of that, there were opportunities that were not fully realised. Those broader questions deserve a fuller debate in their own right. I would love to talk for an hour on it and maybe we will get that chance some time. I will use some of my time to focus on that but first I acknowledge that we are dealing with the final narrow phase of NAMA's existence and the transfer of its remaining functions to other bodies. What is left are residual loans and I hope that where small people are impacted, they get a good shout. There is a whole load of outstanding legal cases and other stuff which, one could argue, does not require a stand-alone agency any more and all of the bureaucratic costs associated with it. On that point and purely on the specifics, the Bill before us makes sense. Transferring the remaining functions to the NTMA allows for a streamlined transition. However, it is important that we assess the NAMA legacy honestly. While it did make a paper return of €4 billion, it did not realise the full potential of the assets it was entrusted with managing. It also did not necessarily help people who could have been dug out of a hole, individuals and small businesses, rather than the big entities which some of my colleagues have referenced. The fact that NAMA did not realise its potential is not just my opinion as a TD but is borne out by the market evidence and assessments of independent observers. Between 2013 and 2015, NAMA sold some of the largest loan portfolios in the history of the State. According to the National Competitiveness and Productivity Council, commercial property values in Dublin rose by over 70% between 2013 and 2018, while development land values in some areas more than doubled. Many of the assets that later benefited from that recovery had already been sold off by NAMA. While I acknowledge that everything is better in hindsight, we should be able to look at the bigger picture. In hindsight, they were sold at massively discounted prices. The Irish Times reported in 2016 that several major portfolios sold to international investment funds were subsequently resold at profits ranging from 30%, which is not half-bad when one thinks about it, to over 100% in some cases, often within a few years. The public accounts committee in its 2017 review noted that significant value uplift accrued to purchasers rather to the State. Basically, the State exited too early. We know that NAMA's mandate pushed it towards rapid de-leveraging rather than long-term value creation. The agency itself stated in its 2014 annual report that it was accelerating disposals to meet debt repayment targets. Those targets, to be clear, were shaped largely by the political and institutional environment of the time which rewarded early repayment and visible progress. I would argue that it was more on the political side because the Government of the day wanted to be able to say that it had made progress in advance of the 2016 election, even if that meant forgoing future gains. If one was looking at it from the perspective of what is in the best interests of the country rather than in the best interests of those going into the next election, one might have said we should wait a little bit longer. It is a fair question to ask whether the State could have earned more by holding assets for longer or by retaining the income-producing properties for rental yield. Experts who know a lot more than I do would argue that was the case and the evidence also suggests so. The ESRI, for example, in its 2019 analysis of post-crisis asset management said that a longer-term hold strategy would likely have produced higher net returns for the State, particularly in the residential and office sectors. None of this is to deny the challenges we faced, the pressure from Europe and the ECB or the constraints that NAMA operated under but we must learn from this. How far back do we go? If one wanted to be fair minded, one could argue that successive Fianna Fáil administrations made the boom boomier. The larger political parties at the time had a very close relationship with developers. Some of those relationships were examined in tribunals and even if we did not get to the levels of outright corruption, there was a cosy consensus with developers and Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael in particular. That kind of consensus led to decisions that massively increased the value of land for certain developers and led to speculation. It got to the stage that by 2006, most of the State's revenues were coming through services. In the 2008 and 2009 period, we absolutely had global pressures and a global collapse. It was not, obviously, endemic to Ireland per se but the crash was made crashier because of previous Fianna Fáil policies in particular. I was in one of the Government parties at the time. We had some very serious decisions to make and we made them. I remember having a meeting two years before the 2011 general election and saying that it looked like we were all going to lose our seats. I asked what we were going to do and suggested that we should try to do what was best for the country, one way or the other. I know that every grouping in government at that time - and I pay tribute to the late Brian Lenihan - was trying to doing its best in the circumstances. The bank guarantee scheme, in hindsight, may not have been absolutely necessary. We do not know if some of the banks were systemic banks or not. All we know is that we could not have taken that risk. The former Deputy, Eamon Gilmore, said it was either Frankfurt's way or Labour's way but it turned out to be Frankfurt's way. The Troika came in and told us precisely what to do. We could not afford to do what the Greeks did and, indeed, they lost out down the line in any event. The European Central Bank and our European Union partners were prepared to give us a dig out but not in a way that would put themselves into discomfort. We were forced into a situation in 2009 and 2010 where, if we did not make decisions that hurt people, it was going to hurt people a lot more. That is not a great position to be in. We still have the legacy of that, with nurses, gardaí and teachers on starting incomes that are a lot less than they should be. I have called for that pay restoration several times. That has not happened and then we wonder why there are recruitment issues. Coming back to the present, we could have had additional funds for the State if NAMA had been handled in a more assessable way. We should have looked at the situation in 2013, 2014 and 2015 and, noting the trend was upwards, we should have said, "Let us hang on and let us realise more for the State, rather than trying to make a political point in advance of the election". If we are to learn from this experience, we must acknowledge that the agency's potential was not fully realised and that was because of politics rather than best practice. I hope we never again get into a scenario in which we are put under global pressure. If we have to create another NAMA in the future, we must look at it in a more strategic way and consider what outcomes to seek and whether we can change the system as we go along to realise the best outcome for the people of the country. We were sold short. NAMA made an extra €4 billion in terms of the paper assessment of the value of its assets at the time but a lot of income was left behind that could have been gained for the people.

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