NAMA the last entry in catalogue of ineptitude

SHOULD the interests of the banks be prioritised over those of taxpayers?

I suggest that the taxpayers’ interests should clearly take precedence. Consequently, alternative bank capitalisation options should have been carefully evaluated and only if no satisfactory solution emerged would the Swedish model of NAMA, coupled with bank nationalisation, have been worth considering. All of that required a far higher standard of assessment than the Green party applied last Saturday.

Their pact with Fianna Fáil, like Faust’s with the devil, may well prove to be their nemesis. The electorate, which is facing into a long period of austerity, will not forget the Greens support for an utterly incompetent administration.

To expect the already overburdened ordinary taxpayer to pay any more is not only counterproductive but may even risk civil unrest. The reality is that for each employee in Europe and the US there are two workers in China and India who are ready to take his or her job at a fraction of the wage rate. The breathtaking catalogue of government ineptitude includes the senseless loss of our flagship sugar industry, the fiasco that was the massively expensive decentralisation plan, useless evoting machines stored expensively, failure of financial regulation, the squandering of public money by Fás, extravagant salaries for politicians with tax-free “expenses”, tax-free golden handshakes for the incompetent and no doubt more to emerge.

If, as is quite probable, we are eventually saddled with a busted NAMA owing a residual debt of many billions, the taxpayers will not have the capacity, never mind the inclination, to shoulder that burden. If the Government fails to reduce the probability of the insolvency of NAMA by, at the very least, amending the legislation to eliminate the proposed €7bn handout to the banks and their shareholders, or fails to perform a public service by resigning, would the last person to leave Ireland please turn out the lights.

AJ Navratil

Ballinacurra House

Midleton

Co Cork