Officials at the Department of Finance remain wedded to winding up the National Asset Management Agency (Nama) by the end of the year, even as enabling legislation was stalled by the general election.
Minister for Finance Jack Chambers published the general scheme of draft legislation in July that was to pave the way for State-owned bad bank to take over the remnants of Irish Bank Resolution Corporation (IBRC) by the end of 2024 or early 2025 – and dissolution of Nama itself by the close of this year.
While the Oireachtas finance committee engaged in pre-legislative scrutiny of the of the plan, the planned publication and enactment of the enabling bill was put on ice when Taoiseach Simon Harris called an election in early November – affecting timelines around the IBRC transfer in the first instance.
“Officials in the Department of Finance are working closely with the Office of Parliamentary Counsel and the Attorney General’s Office at present to draft the legislation, which will be published and brought before the Oireachtas,” a spokesman for the Department said.
The special liquidators of IBRC, which was set up during the financial crisis to take over the assets failed lenders Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide Building Society, continue to progress the substantial conclusion of the company’s liquidation, pending the drafting and enactment of supporting legislation, he said.
[ Nama completes €400m cash transfer to exchequerOpens in new window ]
“The legislation, when enacted, will facilitate and support the orderly conclusion of the special liquidation of the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation Limited, and the dissolution of the National Asset Management Agency by the end of 2025,” he added.
The plan is to move what remains of the two organisations into a special resolution unit to be set up in the National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA) to manage residual activities. This would allow the incoming government to declare the conclusion, of sorts, of the two crisis-era entities.
What’s in store for 2025?
Nama, which was set up in 2009 to take over toxic commercial property loans from the country’s banks, said on Wednesday its portfolio has fallen from a peak of €32 billion to €150 million.
This has been through a mix of selling of portfolios of loans over the years and debtors repaying their loans by working with Nama, or refinancing elsewhere. Nama generated €600 million of cash last year.
Over the course of 2025, it aims to deliver about 171 homes on Nama-funded sites and move land capable of delivering about 4,000 homes in the future to another State body, it said. This is known to be the Land Development Agency (LDA).
“2025 will see us complete our deleveraging work to the greatest extent possible,” said Nama chief executive Brendan McDonagh.
“We will finish the wind-down of the agency diligently, carefully managing the complex process of closing a successful statutory body that at its peak managed €32 billion of assets across 60,000 property assets in Ireland, the UK, Europe, the US, and South Africa.”
Still, Des Carville, head of the Department of Finance’s bank shareholding and financial advisory unit, told the Oireachtas finance committee in September that the new NTMA recovery unit will have “quite a long” lifespan to deal with residual assets and litigation in which both Nama and IBRC are involved.
IBRC’s liquidators are also currently in the process of selling most of the assets left on the company’s books – including a number of properties that once belonged to businessman Seán Quinn’s family. However, it faces difficulties selling Ukrainian and Russian assets due to the war between both countries.
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