NAMA to return €300m more than expected to Exchequer
NAMA, the State body responsible for handling property loans from the financial crisis, plans to return more money to the taxpayer than previously expected.
The organisation, which is due to be dissolved this year, plans to return €5.5 billion to the Exchequer – €300m more than previously thought.
This made up of a surplus of €5.05 billion and €450m paid in corporation tax.
The organisation said that €4.69 billion has already been paid with €800m to be transferred by the end of this year.
In 2022, the Comptroller and Auditor General estimated that the cost to the State of measures taken to stabilise the banking system after the financial crisis in 2008 was €45.7 billion.
The National Assets Management Agency was established in 2009 to handle property loans of Irish banks which were facing collapse during the financial crisis.
It bought loans which had a book value of about €70 billion for €30 billion and the banks required capital from the State to cover the shortfall left on on their balance sheets.
NAMA has been debt free since it paid of the last of its €31.8 billion in borrowings in 2020.
The organisation said it made €197m last year.
NAMA said that between 2014 and 2024 it had funded the delivery or facilitated the construction of 42,500 homes.
NAMA chief executive Brendan McDonagh said that every NAMA decision, every engagement with a debtor and every transaction were framed against a commercial backdrop of maximising the amount that it believed could be recovered for the State.
“The results we are announcing today and the increase in our surplus demonstrate how effective we have been in doing that,” Mr McDonagh said.
NAMA Chairman Aidan Williams said that the agency’s greatest achievement is something unique.
“The organisation has succeeded in achieving its aim of managing itself out of business. We have never lost sight of the fact that NAMA, unlike other commercial entities, was designed to disappear,” he said.
“But NAMA could only disappear when the portfolio of loans it had acquired was successfully deleveraged in a manner that minimised the risks and maximised recovery for the State as prescribed in legislation. Now that the process is close to complete, the agency’s focus is on finishing the job and transferring the remaining elements of its surplus to the Exchequer by end 2025,” he added.
The Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe welcomed today’s announcement that NAMA’s overall projected lifetime surplus has been increased by a further €300m, with €5.5 billion now expected to be returned by NAMA to the Exchequer by the time the agency concludes its work later this year.
“NAMA has entered into its final phase in a robust position thanks to the dedication and expertise of its staff and the exceptional progress it has made in recent years,” Mr Donohoe said.
“I have every confidence that NAMA will complete its remaining deleveraging activity over the next six months with the same professionalism and commitment it has demonstrated throughout its mandate,” he added.
Article Source – NAMA to return €300m more than expected to Exchequer – RTE