Sir, – Cantillon (December 14th) reported the sale of the first tranche of Irish Bank Resolution Corporation (IBRC) loans. It noted some of the original borrowers have bought their own debt back! This is at a massive discount funded by the taxpayer. In my memory we were assured at the set-up of Nama that this is exactly what would not happen.
One of the beneficiaries of this largesse from the taxpayer is Denis O’Brien. It is ironic that he was one of the luminaries at Farmleigh and also is a wealthy tax exile from Ireland. Of course, he is not alone in benefiting from all this gifting from the taxpayers. Will there be a liability to gift tax? What a failure of democracy and capitalism. Why did we bother setting up an expensive structure such as Nama when we could have written down the debt at the outset? – Yours, etc,
BRENDAN CHAPMAN,
Trimleston Drive,
Booterstown,
Co Dublin.