National Asset Management Agency said it expects to pay back €5.2bn to the State by the time it is wound up
The agency is due to complete its work at the end of next year, but Finance Minister Michael McGrath is planning to set up a Resolution Unit within the National Treasury Management Agency to look after any issues or assets that are still outstanding.
This will include litigation, and Mr McDonagh said Nama is still involved in 17 cases, although seven are considered to be dormant, with no action taken by the plaintiffs for some time.
There are 10 cases that Nama is trying to resolve, as the plaintiff in five and the defendant in the others. Acknowledging they may not be finished by the time Nama winds up at the end of 2025, Mr McDonagh observed: “Sometimes people want to go to court.”
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The CEO said that while some of the legal cases do not involve assets at all, in others “we believe the debtors might have some assets that they should be handing over. We have pursued debtors all the way through Nama’s life, and it would not be fair to walk away now”.
At the end of 2025 the number of legal cases left should be “less than 10”, he predicted, while the value of assets remaining in Nama’s portfolio will be less than €50m.
The ‘bad bank’, which was set up in 2009 to help deal with the banking crisis, has contributed €4.25bn to the State, and expects to pay back €5.2bn by the time it is wound up. This includes €400m in corporation tax.
It made a profit of €68m after tax last year, according to its most recent annual report, the 13th year in a row of profitability.
Nama says it has delivered 14,269 housing units to the State, including 422 last year. Another 21,989 residential units have been built on sites that previously benefited from Nama funding, bringing the agency’s total housing contribution to 36,258 units since 2014.
There are another 14,282 potential units in its landbank, with planning applications lodged for 3,218 of these, which are currently awaiting a decision from An Bord Pleanála.
When it was set up, Nama took on loans linked to 60,000 properties, with over a third of these in Britain and Northern Ireland and 8pc of them in America and Europe.
Mr McDonagh said most of the properties left on its books are in Dublin, although there are a number of “strategic sites” in Kildare. There are only two assets overseas, which the CEO said are complicated by local legal issues. One of these is in Poland, and he described the other as being “on the side of a mountain in Montenegro”.
As Nama continues its wind-down, the number of staff at the agency reduced from 110 to 92 last year. The total bill for pay, pensions and benefits was €16.1m, down from €18.6m the previous year.
Mr McDonagh’s annual salary as CEO remains at €430,000, and he is entitled to a performance bonus of up to 60pc of that. However, he again waived this entitlement, as he has done since being appointed.
Speaking at the launch of Nama’s annual report, Finance Minister Michael McGrath said he is about to bring forward legislation for approval by the Cabinet in order to set up the new Revolution Unit.
The unit will also complete the wind-down of the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation (IBRC), the entity set up in 2011 as a merger of the state-owned Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide Building Society. There are 10 assets left in the IBRC portfolio, for which disposal strategies are in place, but they are complex, Mr McGrath said.
