Sinn Féin’s Pearse Doherty on Vulture Funds, NAMA and Northern Ireland

Regulation is one way tackle so-called vulture funds, says Sinn Féin finance spokesperson Pearse Doherty, but it is not clear whether there is a will at government level to introduce it.The Donegal TD told this week’s Inside Business podcast that he believes the government still wants to use these funds to “clean up the carcasses” of the commercial property sector.Deputy Doherty was speaking after last night’s RTÉ documentary, The Great Irish Sell Off, which reported that giant US investment funds paid miniscule amounts of tax despite making enormous profits on their Irish investments.Irish Times markets correspondent Joe Brennan has reported widely on these funds, and spoke to the podcast about the main players in the market, the assets and loans that they have acquired and the structures they have used to pay very little tax.One of those investment funds, Cerberus, hit the headlines over its controversial purchase of NAMA’s Project Eagle portfolio. Barry O’Halloran took us through the details of that and he also raised questions about whether the government may have accidentally done the wrong thing by closing the Section 110 loophole.Also on the podcast, Pearse Doherty spoke about the resignation of Martin McGuinness as Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland. Sinn Féin were left with “no choice” he said, after talks between McGuinness and the DUP First Minister Arlene Foster came to naught. The next step is elections, said Doherty, with lengthy negotiations on the future of the power-sharing institutions in Northern Ireland to follow.

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