Nama highfliers to exit agency with payoffs of €42k each

Thirty-six highfliers at Nama earning over €100,000 are to exit the agency door at the end of the year with an average payoff of €42,000 each.

According to Finance Minister Michael Noonan, 50 Nama employees have opted for the agency’s voluntary redundancy programme as the agency winds down its operations.

In a written Dáil reply to Fianna Fail’s Michael McGrath, Mr Noonan confirmed that 36 of the 50 to opt for voluntary redundancy earn €100,000 to €200,000, with the remaining 14 workers earning less than €100,000. Mr Noonan confirmed no employee earning over €200,000 at Nama has opted for the voluntary redundancy scheme.

According to Mr Noonan, the departure of the 50 employees will save the agency €5.3m annually.

“These costs include base salary, employer PRSI costs and employer pension costs,” said Mr Noonan.

He said the cost of the voluntary redundancy scheme for the 50 staff will be about €2.1m, which works out at an average redundancy payment of €42,000 each.

Yesterday was the deadline for acceptance forms to be lodged with Nama’s redundancy scheme and Mr Noonan said the figures were “indicative until agreements have been signed and returned”.

In response to the agency advertising the terms of voluntary redundancy programme to its workforce, almost a quarter of the workforce expressed an interest.

However, bosses at Nama put a halt to a third of those seeking to leave the agency by the end of this year.

Figures provided by Mr Noonan show the agency received 80 applications from staff seeking to avail of the scheme’s generous terms announced earlier this year.

The agency is seeking to reduce its workforce by 51 from 342 to 291 by the end of the year. In response to the scheme being over-subscribed, Nama rejected 26 of the applications to leave, with three staff changing their mind and opting to stay and one employee who had opted for the voluntary redundancy scheme deciding to leave now.

Nama is seeking to further reduce its workforce to 125 by the end of next year as it winds down its operations.

Based on the payments in the current redundancy plan, the agency will pay €6.97m for a further 166 employees to take the redundancy package in 2016 but save the Agency €17.5m in annualised savings.

The terms of the Nama redundancy scheme are in line with established public sector norms and grant two weeks’ statutory pay per year of service, capped at €600 per week, plus three additional weeks of base salary per year of service with an overall cap of two years base salary.

Average pay, including pension contributions, at Nama in 2014 was just over €110,000 a year or €2,115 a week. Mr Noonan has previously confirmed the overall cost of Nama’s redundancy scheme and appropriate staff retention measures agreed with Nama will not exceed €20m.

Nama was set up in 2009 to run for a fixed 10-year period. Staff working at the agency are employed by the National Treasury Management Agency on fixed-term contracts and seconded to Nama.

The decision to slash staff numbers relatively early in the proposed 10-year life of Nama follows last year’s decision to speed the selloff of Nama assets in order to repay 80% of its original €32bn of senior debt by the end of 2016.

“There is now a considerable degree of uncertainty about the future of Nama, with the minister for finance seemingly back-tracking on his plans for an early wind up in favour of it turning it in to a property development agency,” said Mr McGrath.