Richard O'Donoghue: Winding Up NAMA, Who Is Accountable?
Richard O'Donoghue addresses the planned winding up of NAMA and raises concerns about long-running cases dating back to 2016, where borrowers on payment plans say they were never given a chance to resolve their loans. He asks what will happen to people who lost properties and livelihoods and who will be held accountable as the institution is dissolved.
Case example: a 2016 judgment
Richard O'Donoghue cites a specific 2016 case: a judgment for roughly 55,000 euros (with about 9,000 euros ordered for interest) where the borrowers entered a payment plan to get back on their feet. Ten years on the balance remains almost unchanged and they still cannot secure a meeting with the NAMA group to finalise their account.
Legal fallout and loan-book sales
O'Donoghue highlights lengthy legal fallout over loan books sold by NAMA, including court challenges involving purchasers like Pepper. He notes Supreme Court findings about improper property takeovers in the first 12 months of some firms' operations and asks how affected people will be remedied.
Accountability and consequences
The speaker questions whether dissolving NAMA will simply pass unpaid problems to other parties and whether those responsible will escape scrutiny or be promoted into other public roles. He presses for clarity on reimbursements, the treatment of portfolios, and how the state will address people left behind by past decisions.
We publish thousands of recordings to make Irish politics transparent and resistant to manipulation. Spotted an error? Report it — together we are building a reliable archive of Irish politics.
People are talking here today and we're talking about NAMA and the winding up of NAMA. It's easy to wind up something that when people wouldn't talk to you. I'm just going to give you a small bit of history without mentioning names and the cases here to do with the likes of NAMA and because of them not interacting with people that in their times of trouble. And I have people here that were in 2016 were in trouble like a lot of other people in this country were in trouble and they got a judgment against them. But at the time they had a judgment against them for 55,000 euros. That's what they owed. 9,000 euros was the order on interest on their money. So they entered in in 2016 into a payment plan to get on their feet and since when they got on their feet about a year on interest they've tried to get through to NAMA and financial institution to do a deal how they could finish their loan book. Here is the file here in front of me and the dates I just want early 2016 and they still have their payment plan in place today and still can't get a meeting with the NAMA group to finish up their accounts. Now we're talking about 2016 we're 10 years on and the balance on their account at the moment is just under 55,000 which their first judgment was brought against them in 2016. And we're winding up something that we said was a great thing at the time they took on all the different parts. How many things have been in the Supreme Court on loan books that were sold off by NAMA and the likes of Pepper and them brought in and they're working in this country illegally in the first 12 months because they didn't have 12 months of accounts done. How many high court battles were lost over that? How many people's properties were taken because of the likes of NAMA and people wanted to enter into agreements to save their businesses, their houses. How many of those? And what are you going to do? Dissolve it and pass the book to somebody else? So nobody else will talk to them and somebody gets paid again to deal with something that it wasn't dealt with in the first place. Now we saw a case last year where the likes of in the Supreme Court overruled the likes of some of the financial institutions that got their loan books through NAMA's were found guilty of taking properties in the first 12 months of their existence. What's going to happen with those people's properties? What's going to happen with those people's livelihoods that were lost because people in NAMA were not able to pay their would not talk to them? What are we going to do with them? Who's going to reimburse them now? Who's going to deal with the portfolio that's there at the moment? And the ones that were never talked to? Is there another thing we'll sweep it under the carpet? We'll get rid of it and we'll now put something else in place for to take on the last of the loan books and things that they have. No accountability. Are they going to get promoted to people that were actually involved in this institution? Are they going to get promoted within the government jobs as well in different departments? Are they going to get a promotion somewhere where they could excel within their own future careers now after NAMA? That's where we see problems arising from this. There's an awful lot of people within the NAMA group have to account for things that they've done and done wrong. They may have got a couple of bits and pieces right, they may have dealt with different people in different ways but they also left the good hard-working people that wanted to fix up their books, they left them behind and they won't be forgiven for it.
Thank you for downloading 🙏
If you publish this material on social media, we would be very grateful if you tagged VideoParliament. It helps us reach more people and keep building a transparent archive of Irish politics.
