Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)

The committee will now consider the dissolution of the National Asset Management Agency, NAMA. To this end, the committee has invited representatives from the National Treasury Management Agency, NTMA, and NAMA. NAMA was established in 2009 as part of the State’s response to the 2008 banking crisis to deal with property-backed loans acquired from Irish financial institutions. At the time, NAMA acquired 11,500 land and development and associated loans from five financial institutions, with more than 800 debtor connections, an acquisition value of €32 billion and a par value of €74 billion. With less than 18 months remaining in the lifetime of NAMA, it is necessary to make suitable arrangements for the management of any residual activity of NAMA after this time. While the Government had planned for a complete dissolution of the entire NAMA infrastructure by the end of 2025, it has become clear that this will not be feasible as some assets may still be on NAMA’s balance sheets and some litigation cases may be outstanding at the end of 2025. To manage these outstanding matters, a resolution unit is to be set up and resourced by the NTMA. The Government has identified two key challenges with the wind-down and its associated timeline, namely, the pace of deleveraging and the timeline for asset disposal and the significant level of work still required to resolve par debt and the exit of the debtor connections.

The committee has invited witnesses from the NTMA and NAMA to discuss the following matters: the special liquidation of the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation, IBRC; the dissolution of NAMA; the retention and-or destruction of data records of the IBRC and NAMA; ongoing and unresolved cases; staffing arrangements following the dissolution of NAMA; current assets under NAMA’s ownership; and an update on NAMA’s commission of investigation report and expected publication. In this context, cuirim fáilte roimh an bhfinné inniu. I welcome to the meeting today the chief executive officer of NAMA, Mr. Brendan McDonagh. I invite him to make his opening statement.