We can’t afford to pin all our hopes on NAMA

WHY are the options for resolving our banking crisis being limited to a NAMA solution to the exclusion of all else? When companies are bankrupt they go into administration and the receiver sells off the assets, pays off the creditors and the shareholders receive what is left, if anything.

Rather than spending fortunes trying to keep the banks in business should not the Government direct its energies to encouraging successful banks around the world to invest in a chain of Irish branches. The banks stay open for business, deposits are guaranteed and within twelve months the bank branches would be in the hands of HSBC and other successful banking organisations.

Senior management would be fired, defaulting property developers and their companies wound up, and the country's banking operations in the hands of competent management. Not only will there be no cost to the taxpayer but at a critical moment Ireland will benefit from a substantial inward investment.

The Irish banks have not disclosed all their bad debts and in all probability will need more financial support and NAMA may take years to succeed. To keep things afloat will be a dreadful drain on Ireland’s resources in the midst of a recession with emigration rising, a declining tax base and tax revenues already having passed the point of diminishing returns. Surely we cannot afford to put all our money on a horse which has manifestly no breeding, no track record, the trainer of which has a dismal record, and a horse which the bookies have at 100 to one.

Surely, there are other options worthy of consideration. In the meantime, American lawyers might demonstrate to us how we can take a class action against the financial regulators, members of government and bankers past and present who have failed to fulfil their responsibilities to society thereby causing investors, institutions and pension funds to suffer unprecedented losses.

Charles Hazell

Mobarnane Grove

Fethard

Co Tipperary