Doomed NAMA does not have expertise to carry out its task

The hoopla emerging from Friday’s distressed property auction in the Shelbourne Hotel obscures huge headaches for the new Government.

They seem unaware the National Asset Management Agency is a dysfunctional monster. Urgent clarity is required as to how it will achieve the implementation of its second business plan. What precisely is its role? A debt collection agency? A property development corporation? The state’s bad bank? The only certainty at this stage is that it has failed to achieve its original objectives as set out in 2009.

NAMA’s purpose was to take toxic loans for overvalued property off the balance sheets of guaranteed banks so that they would not be nationalised. We now know the only two surviving banks will be in state control. AIB is 92% state owned. BofI has to raise more than €5bn with a current market valuation of €1.5bn. The rest are nationalised and being wound down. Given the state could have dealt with these loans inside nationalised banks, the premise of NAMA can be questioned as an enormously costly bureaucratic vehicle.