Rabbitte says Government would consider including Nama under information Act

THE GOVERNMENT would consider including Nama under the remit of the Freedom of Information Act, Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources Pat Rabbittetold the Dáil.

“If there were more openness about the transactions taking place, it would assist the re-emergence of a market,’’ he said.

Mr Rabbitte was replying to Joe Costello(Lab) who said Nama was operating under a veil of secrecy, despite sitting on property that had a value of almost 33 per cent of GDP.

“While there is speculation about which lands and developers are in Nama, there is no definitive way of confirming which assets Nama controls and it is not possible to view the complete picture of Nama lands,’’ Mr Costello added.

It was clear, he said, that the Nama legislation needed to be seriously reviewed, and one of the first steps should be to ensure it was brought under the Freedom of Information legislation.

Mr Rabbitte said he had a great deal of sympathy with the arguments advanced by Mr Costello.

It was regrettable, he added, that when the Nama legislation was enacted, it was not possible for the House to agree that an Oireachtas oversight committee be established to monitor its affairs.

He said that whether it was Nama, the National Treasury Management Agency, the Central Bank or other publicly funded bodies in the banking and financial sector, the arguments put forward by Mr Costello would be given full consideration by the Cabinet.

The Government, he said, was committed to an elaborate reform programme in respect of legislation restoring the Freedom of Information Act and the extension of its remit to public bodies such as the Garda.

In Nama’s case, he said, there were questions of commercial sensitivity and confidentiality, but that was not to say there ought not to be oversight and, ideally, parliamentary oversight.