The Bill involves the winding up and dissolution of NAMA and bringing the sad story of the IBRC to an end. Nobody will be particularly unhappy about ending this part of Irish history. Nobody can look back to the circumstances that led to this in a positive manner. It is very difficult to look at NAMA, the bank bailout and the entire sorry story without seeing it as being open business for institutional investors and vulture funds and the people who had to pay were the Irish people. I remember the onset of the financial crisis when we went from day to day, week to week and month to month. It was a time and place when people made a detailed study of budgets and how every austerity move would have an impact on them, their lives, their family and their wider community. Nobody knew how we would get out of that set of circumstances. Unfortunately, as always happens, the normal, regular people of Ireland did the heavy lifting. In general, those who caused the problem got off scot-free. What are we talking about? We are talking about a bank bailout and all of the stabilisation measures, which resulted in a net cost of €45.7 billion. Over €5.2 billion was the return on the assets sold by NAMA. Let us be clear. Everything was sold quickly and in a dirty manner. Those outside forces with the money and resources were welcomed in by Governments and able to make an absolute killing. The unfortunate thing was that the people of Ireland had to pay the price and continue to do so. There have been impacts, and not only on individuals, such as those on certain disability payments or whatever else that were cut. Anybody involved in the community sector knows it was hollowed out. Funding for mental health addiction and drug addiction services have never returned to where it was before 2008. That is the reality. The Government wants to say this was a well executed operation, that it is all over and there is nothing to see here, but the fact is that the people were absolutely screwed and the impact is still being felt. That is why we try to keep the pressure on. It is all well and good talking about services of €9 billion and all of the rest, but people out there feel they are being absolutely hammered. The resources of the State, which could be used to provide some element of mitigation, are not coming through. Land, assets and infrastructure were sold off at a pittance. Action was taken by government that reinforced, through austerity, the circumstances that created a detrimental economic impact across the board. We had no building of houses or plan by government. We went from a situation where the market would sort everything, where all was going well and where we had the Celtic tiger situation, when the Government had moved away from building houses, to a situation where all the moneys dried up. The only people who were facilitated were the vulture funds. We have ended up in a scenario where we have the most dysfunctional housing market in the world. We saw the Daft report and what we expected to happen in relation to the Government's removal of whatever protections were provided. What have we ended up with now? We have ended up with rents that are absolutely through the roof and where people cannot afford to buy or to rent houses. If people are on a social housing list, they are waiting for years. This is the circumstance we have been dealing with in real terms from that period of 2008. The Government's attempts to solve this problem was literally to sell off the family goods at rock bottom prices. As I said, we facilitated a huge number of people in making a huge amount of money and, to a greater degree, we facilitated the Irish people in taking all the pain. We are not in a better circumstance now. Government members will talk about the wonders of FDI, and that is not taking into account the present issues and global instability. They will talk about how they maintain the economy but the fact is the economy is not working for a large number of people. We can talk about surpluses and full employment but we have a huge number of people who may be employed in a job that previously would have given them and their families security and it does not at this point. It does not give them any element of security. The Minister of State knows better than others the huge impact it had on politics. It was a breach of trust, particularly for the Minister of State's party, with a huge section of the Irish people. Unfortunately, that has had an impact across the board, in that at times people do not see any solution that politics can provide. At times, because people cannot see a solution, they look in places they never would have considered before. We need to ensure we can offer them something much better and some element of hope of a better life - a life where they can afford the rent and a world where they can buy a house and work one job and not have to work three or four jobs. People used to give out about in the American system. The American dream does not work for most American people. We have almost created an Irish nightmare that is very similar. In terms of the bank bailout, NAMA, IBRC, the history of Anglo Irish Bank and all of it, we are still paying for it now. I will reiterate what my colleagues said. It is good enough that a position, with a salary of €430,000, can literally be found for the chief executive officer of NAMA in the NTMA. I and many others would need some element of explanation for that. I do not think any of this is good enough. The only thing I am happy about is that we are bringing this to an end. We are bringing what was a huge crime carried out against the Irish people to an end but we cannot forget the fact there was a huge-----

Sentiment score: 0.01

There was a huge cost. Just let-----

Sentiment score: 0.16

Okay.

Sentiment score: 0.23