Worthless property is no great asset to NAMA

WE are being told over and over again that NAMA will be good for the country in the long run. But that remains to be seen.

Again the “patients” – the banks and building societies – are getting off scot-free for reckless behaviour while the taxpayer picks up the tab.

We all know it will take at least 10 years to win back the 300,000 or so jobs lost over the past three years. So many of the empty office blocs and warehouse will remain valueless well into the future. How can NAMA look on them as assets?

It is in manufacturing you have the larger workfare – not in R&D – and that is where employment has taken the real hit. It was not the high cost of labour that attracted those companies to Ireland ... it was the lucrative tax incentives. The US government has now put a lot of these tax incentives under scrutiny as it has its own unemployment crisis. So many empty factories will have very little value on the open market for a long time to come. At present there are many government departments renting premises from developers whose assets are to be seized by NAMA. It would seem there is a conflict of interest there for starters. Even the revenue and the HSE rent such offices.

If NAMA is to be accepted by the public it must be totally open and transparent. We are told it is the only “show on the road to recovery”, but who is to represent the taxpayer in this venture?

Certainly not the politicians who have made the PAYE sector pay the price for the reckless behaviour of some of their friends during the Celtic Tiger years.

We should have a referendum on NAMA as it is something that could affect every person in Ireland should it fail, especially the elderly, the sick and very young. The European Central Bank will “own” us through government bonds. Lisbon will only rubber-stamp this ownership as our banks will sell those bonds to the ECB at a discount.

Nuala Nolan

Bowling Green

Galway