Fast-track loans for politicians most disturbing

THE revelation that an unknown number of Fianna Fáil politicians had fast-track loans from Anglo Irish Bank, with some of them amounting to millions of euro, is very disturbing.

This is especially the case when a large number of “assets” that supported loans provided by Anglo Irish Bank are going to be transferred to NAMA.

How can the public have confidence that the policy of paying over the odds for assets transferred to NAMA was entirely in the public interest until the full extent of the loans given to Fianna Fáil politicians by Anglo Irish, or any other bank, is made public and the identities of everyone associated in any way with assets that have been transferred to NAMA are fully revealed.

The Nobel Prize economist Joseph Stiglitz argued that it is criminal to pay over the odds for such assets.

I am not suggesting there is any criminality surrounding what has happened to these assets in Ireland.

However, before any taxpayer, public servant or social welfare recipient should be forced to pay for the loans that are used to buy them, it is not unreasonable to demand that the all the circumstances, including everyone associated in any way with the bank bailouts and NAMA, be revealed before any further public funds are put into any bank and NAMA is allowed to progress any further.

Brian Abbott

‘Glencairn’

Bishopstown Road

Cork