"The captains who navigated the ship onto the rocks are to remain in charge." This dry observation from judge Peter Kelly as he absorbed the full, sorry and frightening picture of the indebtedness overwhelming the Zoe group, a spiderweb of 50 property firms, it sums up most people's attitude to the chaotic mess that is now Ireland Inc.

As we move to the next phase of the financial crisis with the publication of the Nama legislation, the judge's view of the leadership of the largest development company so far to come before the courts for protection from its creditors could just as well be applied to those steering the wider economic recovery plan.

There may be one or two new faces at the top of the banks, but essentially, the same core of people are making the decisions in government, advising on the Nama project, leading the banks and heading the large property companies.

And that, above all reasons, is why the public has so little confidence in our ruling elite's ability to deliver us out of this mess.

The banks' balance sheets have to be cleansed of bad debts so they can restore credit lines to the wider economy and, hopefully, get it functioning properly again. We all agree, reluctantly, on that.

The government has chosen to take the Nama route, which has left them open to criticism from both the political right and left because it exposes the taxpayer to such a huge level of risk. Brian Lenihan, when he presented the Nama legislation last week, argued – very ably and clearly, it must be acknowledged – that it was the only way to get the wider economy back on track without wiping out the banks and that nobody was being "bailed out".

Banks will have to take a hit, Brian Lenihan assures us, because their toxic loans are being bought at a discount, while the developers will still owe the same amount of money they borrowed to the banks, "but they will owe it to Nama".

As yet, however, we are no wiser as to how much all this will cost, mainly because we don't know how much Nama will pay for the toxic loans. Brian Lenihan has promised detailed information on the valuation process and a ballpark figure for the amount of bonds he will issue to the banks by September when the Nama legislation is debated.

But be in no doubt, the final figure will be huge and the valuations it will be based on will have everything to do with hope and nothing to do with reality. That is the only way the whole Nama concept can work.

The banks can't be asked to take a 'discount' on their €90bn in loans that is bigger than their shareholder value, otherwise they might just as well be nationalised. They can't even be asked to take a hit that is so large it dents their ability to start lending again.

Some argue this means the average 'haircut' will probably be around 25% – a far cry from the much higher losses most experts say reflect the real price of the land and developments on which loans are raised.

It follows that if Nama is significantly overpaying for the toxic loans, it has to make very optimistic assumptions about where the property market will be in five or 10 years time if the taxpayer is not going to lose out on an enormous scale.

As Fine Gael's finance spokesman Richard Bruton has pointed out, there is no guarantee this will happen. Seventeen years after its property bubble burst, house prices in Japan are still 40-50% of their peak levels.

The government agrees the risks are large. But they argue we have no choice.

But now we have gone down this route, the real emphasis must be on getting the result the hugely complex construction that is Nama is supposed to be looking for.

For a start, the banks must be forced to meet commitments they made when they were recapitalised (and have reneged on) to extend credit to businesses if the wider public is to get any return for this leap of faith.

And just as developers are now going to get the opportunity to negotiate new terms on their loans with Nama, the banks should also be forced to extend a similar courtesy to homeowners who engage fairly with them when they get into difficulties. Brian Lenihan should have taken a much tougher line with Permanent TSB when it raised its interest rates for mortgage holders. This republic is not about extending one set of rules to banks and developers who are too big to fold and forgetting the citizen.

The Liam Carroll case has given an added dimension to the Nama legislation. It has shone a light on just how badly wrecked this ship of state has become. It has revealed the complexity of the companies Nama will have to deal with – in Zoe's case, 50 were interlinked, each with borrowings drawn down one on the other from a variety of different banks, some Irish and covered by the government guarantee, others foreign and not.

When he turned down the Zoe application for court protection, Peter Kelly painted a picture in the most brutal terms of just how appalling a trading environment companies such as the Zoe group are operating in. Carroll had sold just 39 apartments this
year and had debts of €1bn, with a business plan based on wildly optimistic projections
for the "grossly oversupplied" property market based on "pouring money" into developments with little realistic hope of a return.

That is the reality of Nama's world. The government won't countenance any other way of doing things. Let us hope, for all our sakes, that it is not a triumph of adversity over optimism.