The Nama legislation will have to be amended to reduce the risk to the taxpayer, according to the Green Party chairman, Senator Dan Boyle.
A national convention of the Greens to consider the Nama Bill and the impending review of the Programme for Government could be held in early October, Mr Boyle said today.
He said the party's national executive would meet to consider how the membership could be consulted about Nama, following motions from a number of constituency organisations calling for a convention.
"The main concerns that the public have is that the exposure for the taxpayer is huge and there are legitimate questions about how the risk the taxpayer is being exposed to can be properly managed and shared," Mr Boyle said on RTE Radio's
This Weekprogramme.
He said bank shareholders had to be involved in the risk because ultimately they were the people who would benefit.
"If taxpayers money is going into such a process we have to make sure that the taxpayer is exposed for the smallest amount of time and the smallest amount of money and the legislation as it is written now needs to be tightened up in those areas in particular," he said.
"The danger of Nama is that it could set an artificial floor on the price of property. We think that would repeat many of the mistakes that got us into the difficulty we are now in. terms of an over reliance on property and development," he said.
Mr Boyle said that the Nama Bill was probably the most significant piece of legislation that this Government or any government in recent decades would have had to pass and that was what had led to such genuine public concern.
"The legislation has been published in a consultative form in any case and the expectation is that there will be and there have to be changes and as a membership based party our process will be to consult with our members to identify those changes," he said.
Mr Boyle said the legislation had been brought out in draft form to allow the widest possible public debate to address many of the concerns that existed.
