A NEW faction of the Green Party calling themselves GAN (Greens Against Nama) held a private meeting in the party's Dublin HQ yesterday.

The group met to discuss ways of garnering opposition among members to the government's National Asset Management Agency (Nama) plan in the coming weeks, ahead of an internal party vote on Nama on 10 October.

GAN's opposition to the Nama plan surrounds a number of issues with one "deal breaker" providing the main tenet for the group's anger.

The group said the deal breaker is "paying anything other than current market value" as this "is not acceptable to a very large number of the members". Last weekend the Green Party leadership held a conference in Athlone where members' views on Nama were collated in a preferendum (a weighted voting system used by the Greens to identify the collective preference of members).

GAN argues the new agency should not pay above current market value. Its statement said, "The two leading options [in the preferendum] stipulate that we should only pay current market value." GAN is expected to lobby party members via email in the coming weeks ahead of 10 October when the party's anti-Nama faction will have to convince two-thirds of the members to vote against Nama. If the party opposes the plan, it will have to pull out of government.