The Eagle has Landed for Nama’s big Northern deal

World of Politics with Harry McGee – harrymcgee@gmail.com

The big event in Irish politics this week will be happening about 200 metres from the Dáil chamber.

It’s not the fanfare to mark the return of real politics after a two month summer break – nor is it Enda Kenny warring with Micheál Martin or Gerry Adams in the chamber.

It’s not even Michael Noonan outlining bits and pieces from the Budget.

Instead you have to cross the yard and go down to the basement of the new annex to Leinster House where the committee rooms are – because there is where the Public Accounts Committee is hearing Comptroller and Auditor General Seamus McCarthy discuss his report on the National Asset Management Agency’s handling of Project Eagle, its major portfolio sale in the North.

The report was critical and concluded that the taxpayer might have lost out. That provoked a splenetic response from NAMA, which contended (more or less) that the C&AG’s office didn’t know what it was talking about when it came to putting a value on the property market.

NAMA came out fighting, but fighting too much in my opinion. The evidence strongly suggested after the excellent BBC Spotlight documentary that the Northern businessman Frank Cushnahan, a member of NAMA’s Northern advisory board was on the take.

And he also alleged to have the ear of a very influential person at a senior level in the agency. Its chair Frank Daly, an honourable man, defended its role and contended Cushnahan had no direct knowledge of, or access to sensitive information on property. But how could he fully know that? And it doesn’t look good that the Northern advisory board meetings sometimes took place in Tughan’s, the Belfast solicitor firm caught up in the controversy.

These appearances at the PAC provide Irish politics’ answer to the US Presidential Debate – except nobody is sure who’s Hillary Clinton or who’s Donald Trump.

It provides the high drama in a very busy week for a most unusual Dail.

It also provides a bit of break from the endless Budget speculation we have been hearing all week. Specifically, there has been row over a childcare package amid Fine Gael claims the squeezed middle are being squeezed out by Minister for Children Katherine Zappone. Her people say this is not the case.

The other Independent Ministers are also pressing for items. An increase in pension may be one, as will some local deals and concessions, some of which will be kept under wraps on Budget day.

There was also Sinn Féin private members motion over water charges designed to embarrass Fianna Fáil but in the end it really went nowhere, as Fianna Fáil signalled early it was going to oppose it. It gave us a good old fashioned row nonetheless.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.