Frank Daly heaved a great sigh of relief as he slumped into his favourite armchair after a hard days work as chairman of the National Asset Management Agency (NAMA).
His wife, reading the signs, was sympathetic.
Hard day at the office dear?
Yes, replied Frank, even harder than usual.
You poor dear, was it some nasty blogger asking awkward questions again?
No, even worse, I had to tell the Taoiseach what he was thinking.
My goodness, Frank, your mind reading powers never fail to astonish me. What was going on in our silly Taoiseach’s mind this time?
Somehow he got the idea that NAMA was doing something dodgy, maybe even illegal.
No, Frank, how could he possibly think such a nasty thought?
You wouldn’t understand dear but after taking a look around his brain I quickly realized that what he really meant to say was something dodgy could happen and that he was asking NAMA to make sure it didn’t happen.
Of course that’s the situation Frank. Did our silly Taoiseach accept that his mouth was saying words that weren’t in his brain at all?
Oh yes, he knows his place, he knows who’s in charge of NAMA.
This, of course, is fictional except for the part where Frank Daly tells our Prime Minister that what he’s saying is not what he’s thinking which saw Kenny tuck his tail between his legs and run home.
I first heard of the alleged dodgy dealings within NAMA last February when then Fianna Fail Senator, Mark Daly made a series of very serious allegations on live radio.
I felt the allegations were so serious that I reproduced and published the entire interview and sent a copy to the National Assets Management Agency (NAMA), the National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA), the Dept. of Finance and to the Office of Corporate Enforcement (ODCE).
It’s not that I was expecting any of these agencies to actually act on the allegations, that’s not going to happen until we get a new republic.
It was more to make sure that at least they were aware of the allegations.
And what about Mr. Daly, the mind reader? Can the people of Ireland believe this man when he says there are no dodgy dealings going on within NAMA?
The answer is no, this man cannot be trusted.
He’s just one of a long list of senior civil servants whose actions and decisions almost always seem to benefit powerful people and institutions at the expense of Ireland and its citizens.
An incredible report in the Irish Times of Feb 6th 2004 on bogus non-resident accounts, when Mr. Daly was chairman of the Revenue, will make the point.
In the report Revenue claimed they could find no evidence that banks had encouraged customers to set up bogus non-resident accounts.
This, of course, is a blatant lie. There was, and still is, overwhelming evidence that the banks did encourage customers to break the law.
When Daly was asked about the matter by the Public Accounts Committee he said:
The banks would have brought the shutters down if Revenue had pursued officials aggressively. We had to go about this in a pragmatic way.
So here is a man who refused to act against widespread and well known wrong doing within the banking sector telling us not to worry about the very serious allegations made against the organization he presently controls.
Given his disgraceful decision not to pursue the banks on the bogus non-resident accounts scandal can the people of Ireland trust Frank Daly to act in their interests rather than taking the ‘pragmatic’ route?
In my opinion the answer is no, Frank Daly is not a man that can be trusted.
Copy to:
Frank Daly
NAMA
NTMA
ODCE
Dept of Finance
Taoiseach