Burton asks if Nama will save our bacon

DAIL SKETCH:IN THE boom years it was breakfast roll man. Now it's a mere bacon roll. Or so Labour's Joan Burton informed the Dáil.

Yesterday she was obsessed with food – and haircuts.

Nama, the new National Asset Management Agency, became “banama” or did she mean banana? The breakfast roll of yesteryear has been reduced to a “bacon roll” courtesy of the surname of the Government’s Nama adviser and on this bacon roll Joan wanted no Greens.

She also wanted to know if the Government was “putting all its eggs in the Bacon basket”.

But she took the biscuit or was it the scissors when this stream of culinary consciousness cued to haircuts.

Stockbrokers in Dublin apparently refer to loan “writedowns’’ as haircuts. Joan “as a woman deputy” was very taken by this, because it was a “really important issue for many women”.

At this point on the Government benches, both Mary Coughlan and Mary Harney were patting down their hair, while some of the less follicly challenged males in Fine Gael took umbrage and said hair was important to them too.

She asked “what kind of haircut the taxpayer will be asked to pay” with the acquisition of these “assets”. “Is it a recession haircut that will leave us scalped or will it be a light trim for developers?” The Ceann Comhairle rescued the situation by suggesting to her that “you’ll have to discuss that with your hairdresser”.

Fine Gael’s Alan Shatter provoked the first howls when he asked about the legislation for Nama. He demanded transparency so that the public would know the “value of the loan book” they have acquired. He was equally emphatic about efforts to recover borrowed money and to ensure Nama “is immune from any influence that any person might attempt to impose on it in order to do favours for the friends of Fianna Fáil”.

“Bloody disgrace” said Minister Martin Cullen. “Apologise,” demanded Timmy Dooley.

The Tánaiste said the Government’s approach was in the best interests of the economy and “is not a bailout of the banks” as demonstrated by the fall in bank shares on the stock market.

Then it was Joan’s turn with bacon rolls, bananas, budget billions and a potential bill for the taxpayer of €30 billion.

By the time it came to Fine Gael’s Padraic McCormack, it was time to hit the bar for more than a cup of tea.

Padraic was concerned with the non-renewal of Reps job contracts.

Padraic had written to everyone about these job losses, including the Ceann Comhairle. The “Ceann” as Labour’s Tommy Broughan called him, had sent Padraic a “nice letter” that it was a matter for Teagasc, not the Minister. But Teagasc got its instructions from the Department of Agriculture.

“What do I do” he appealed.

The “Ceann” invited him to his office to talk about the letter.

“When you couldn’t answer it in a letter how will you answer it verbally?” It was a “fancy letter”, but “not worth the paper it’s written on”, he insisted.

The same has been said of some of those Nama loans.