Ethical standard set for NAMA board members should be much higher

NOT having time to read the NAMA legislation in full (120+ pages), I skimmed through a few parts of public interest and the section on “disclosure of interest” (section 29) caught my eye.

This, I assumed , would be quite tightly drafted. After all, with more than €20bn of taxpayers’ money at stake, the need to ensure board members have no conflict of interest would be of paramount importance.

Therefore I was surprised to read that to be subject to the rigours of the legislation such members had to have a “material” interest in the first instance. What is material? Who decides? (In my auditing days 5% was the materiality threshold, but if NAMA has €90bn in loans, this would imply a €4.5bn threshold). Further along, the legislation notes that where a board member has made such a disclosure, it will only be publicised in NAMA’s annual report if “the board, at its discretion,” refers to it. However, the pièce de résistance was reserved for subsection 6: “If the minister is satisfied that a member of the board has contravened” the disclosure requirement, “the minister may, if he or she thinks fit, remove that member from office.”