Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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230. To ask the Minister for Finance if bonus payments have been paid to National Treasury Management Agency and National Asset Management Agency staff in 2014 and 2015; his views as to whether staff at the National Asset Management Agency should receive bonus payments in order to retain staff at the agency; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [25798/15]

Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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I am advised that the NTMA made performance-related payments to 16 staff in respect of 2014. These payments, in aggregate, totalled €79,200. No performance-related payments were made to any employee earning a salary of over €150,000. I am also advised that no such performance-related payments were made to any staff assigned to NAMA. I am further advised by the NTMA that performance related pay is determined at the end of the year, therefore figures for 2015 are not available at this stage. As outlined in my Department's review of NAMA under Section 227 of the NAMA Act, NAMA's ability to achieve its ultimate objectives is premised on a number of assumptions, including that it is able retain sufficient operational capacity and specialist staff. As a result a key finding of that review was that any proposal to help safeguard NAMA's operational capacity and staffing expertise should receive careful consideration in light of potentially significant value implications associated with losing key employees.

As Minister for Finance, I am working with the NAMA Board in this respect and, as the Deputy is aware, arising from those discussions, appropriate staff retention and redundancy measures are being put in place to protect the financial performance of NAMA. The overall cost of these measures, including statutory redundancy, will not exceed €20m. NAMA is hopeful that these measures will enable it to manage its staffing requirements to help ensure the delivery of its objectives. I refer the Deputy in this respect to my response to Parliamentary Question 107, which was answered on 12th March 2015 and to page 9 of the 2014 NAMA Annual Report which is available on NAMA's website.