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.