Business And Leadership: Lenihan: George Lee was sold as an ‘economic messiah’

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Lenihan: George Lee was sold as an ‘economic messiah’

09.02.2010
Fine Gael sold George Lee as an “economic messiah” and Lee’s resignation from the FG party and from politics yesterday came as “a big surprise”, the Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan TD said yesterday.

Lenihan made his comments on Matt Cooper’s The Last Word programme on Today FM yesterday evening.

The Minister suggested that part of the problem for Lee was that Fine Gael had billed him as “someone who could solve all of our problems immediately”, and that Lee had “discovered for himself that it can’t be done”.

He suggested that Fine Gael had “oversold” Lee from the very start and that Lee had “accepted their word” and then felt that his “messianic economic qualities” were not being accepted by the party.

Lenihan said that the nine months spent by Lee as a TD was a short time to be in the Dail, pointing out that when a TD first arrives they must settle into their brief and see what contribution they can make.

IMF ‘very supportive’ of NAMA
Also on the programme, Minister Lenihan responded to media reports yesterday that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had told the Department of Finance back in April that the Government’s plan for a National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) would not yield a significant increase in lending from the country’ banks.

The Minister refuted those reports, saying that the IMF is “very supportive” of the NAMA scheme.

He pointed out that in the same minutes in which the fund raised concerns about NAMA not leading to a significant rise in bank lending, it said it was very important that the Government proceed with new agency, “so they are not suggesting that we are following the wrong policy”.

“What they did indicate at the time and what I freely accept is that it [NAMA] would not lead to a significant increase in bank lending in Ireland. How could it? The whole difficulty in the past five years is that there was grossly excessive bank lending,” Lenihan said.

“I take it that the IMF means that we are not going to try and recreate the kind of property bubble we saw,” he added.