LABOUR LEADER Eamon Gilmore has said the Government should be legally represented to protect the public interest at next week’s High Court hearing on the Liam Carroll-controlled Zoe group.
A second attempt by the group to seek the appointment of an examiner will be heard next Tuesday.
Mr Gilmore said yesterday that Attorney General Paul Gallagher should apply to the court for the right to nominate lawyers.
“The outcome of this case will have significant potential implications for taxpayers,” he added.
A Government spokeswoman said it had no comment to make on Mr Gilmore’s proposal.
The Labour leader said that the proceedings had been in and out of the High Court and Supreme Court since July 17th and there had been “a small army of lawyers” present to defend the interests of the banks and of the Zoe group and its directors and shareholders.
“But there has been nobody there to represent the public interest,” he added.
Mr Gilmore said Zoe had argued in the early proceedings that valuations of its properties should remain confidential.
“However, without this sort of information, we will have no way of knowing whether the proposed level of discount the Government intends to offer to the banks on properties under the Nama legislation is an appropriate one,” he added.
Mr Gilmore said that the mission statement of the office of the Attorney General had said the AG “may exercise a role as representative of the public for assertion or defence of public rights other than in the context of criminal prosecutions”.
Surely, he added, it was a case crying out for such a role to be played by the Attorney General.
He said he was not suggesting that Mr Gallagher or any of his staff should be directly involved in the proceedings.
“The Attorney General is the principal author of the Nama Bill and would be compromised,” said Mr Gilmore.
“What I envisage is the Attorney General seeking the permission of the court to appoint an independent senior counsel to ensure that the public interest is upheld in the proceedings.”
He accepted, he said, that making such an application would be a new departure.
“However, the crisis in which we now find ourselves is unprecedented in its scope and its potential implications for Irish taxpayers,” Mr Gilmore added.
“It is, of course, possible that the High Court might not agree to such an application, but there is, at least, an arguable case to be made to the court.”
Fine Gael Finance spokesman Richard Bruton last night accused the Government of running away from a debate on Nama.
“The Government’s unwillingness to accept that Nama may not be the only game in town adds to public suspicions that it is following a soft-touch approach for the reckless bankers and developers responsible for many of our economic difficulties. The risk of Nama is a debt on the taxpayer which could hobble the public finances for a generation,” he said.
Mr Bruton said the Fine Gael approach would protect the taxpayer first and foremost by leaving distressed, developer-related loans with those responsible for creating them.
“The Government’s ‘There Is No Alternative’ approach has not been a formula for generating cross-party or public support and I am proposing that in September the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Finance and the Public Service should hear testimony from international and domestic experts of the pros and cons of the Nama proposal vis-a-vis the alternatives that have been presented by other parties and experts,” he said.