Jim Allister made the following speech during today’s debate on NAMA:
“Just this time last year, the then First Minister, Mr Peter Robinson, described Mr Frank Cushnahan as a pillar of the establishment. Anyone who watched the jaw-dropping ‘Spotlight’ programme of a couple of weeks ago might well have thought that that statement said more about the establishment than anything else. Of course, the establishment, then as now, is the DUP and Sinn Féin.
“As Steven Agnew rightly said, there are two distinct aspects to this. There is the potential criminality: were there rucksacks of cash or hoards of money in secret accounts in the Isle of Man? Who were they for and was there any corruption involved? All of that is for rigorous, relentless and uncompromising criminal investigation, and I am very happy that that takes its course.
“However, as the Republic of Ireland’s Audit Committee said, there is also the question of whether there was political influence. That is where this House should come into the equation, in seeking to hunt down whether there was political influence that laid the basis that facilitated and was part of that which was rotten in all of the NAMA escapade.
“Of course, there are many issues to investigate that do not impinge on the criminal investigation. There is the issue of how and why Mr Sammy Wilson as Finance Minister made the three recommendations that he did for suitable persons to serve on the committee: Frank Cushnahan, Mr Pengelly and, as we now discover, a third individual, Mr Adair, who never even knew that he had been nominated. He did not discover that until years later, and he himself had the wit to say that, because he was a debtor to NAMA, he would be wholly unsuitable to be appointed. What does that tell us about the due diligence that was conducted by Sammy Wilson in making those recommendations? Was there the same lack of due diligence in recommending Frank Cushnahan, whom the PAC of this House said had behaved totally unethically over Red Sky and the Housing Executive?
“The second issue of political investigation is one of the things in the programme that intrigued me most. Frank Cushnahan explained to Mr Miskelly years before this became DUP executive policy that the way forward in NAMA was to extricate the NAMA debt and transfer it outside of NAMA to a third party so that deals could then be done. Lo and behold, that exactly became the policy of the First Minister and the Finance Minister, and, it seems, the deputy First Minister. It was to back foreign vulture companies coming in and buying the debt, and, of course, we know that the very reason that the PIMCO deal fell apart is that one of the beneficiaries of that apparently was to be the man whose original idea it was and whose friends — they professed themselves his friends — then took it up and ran with it and delivered. Is that not something of political influence that this House should be investigating? It patently is.
“Then from that programme, there is the suggestion from Mr Cushnahan that Peter and Sammy could lobby for a bit of a discount on the NAMA price. Did that happen? Is the House not interested to know whether that happened? Does the House want to hide its head in the sand? I understand that some to whom this comes too close do want to hide their head in the sand. They want to build a barrier and say, “Oh, the National Crime Agency is interested”. As we heard at the start of the debate, there is no sub judice issue here.
“We know that we are entitled to talk about and investigate these matters. Some would rather hide from them. It will be a test of this House whether or not it hides from them.”