High cost of Nama failings - C&AG report

‘FOOL me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me,” the saying goes.

In fact, as the Comtroller and Auditor General’s report into the Project Eagle debacle reveals, the Irish Government and its alter ego, Nama, was fooled three times, resulting in consecutive losses to the Irish taxpayer.

In the first instance, Nama acquired Eagle loans valued at the height of the Celtic Tiger at €5.6 billion for a much discounted price of €1.9bn. That should have allowed it to make a tidy profit when it sold them on.