Nama to return €300m more than projected to Exchequer as it winds down operations
THE NATIONAL ASSET Management Agency (Nama) had published its final annual report before its dissolution.
The report reveals a profit of €197m in 2024, marking the agency's fourteenth consecutive year of profitability.
Total payments from Nama to the Exchequer are now projected to be €5.5 billion, comprising a €5.05 billion lifetime surplus and €450m corporation tax.
The agency, which purchased almost €32 billion worth of bad property development loans from Ireland's banks after the 2008 financial crash, is on course to return an additional €300m to the fund, surpassing earlier projections.
Established in 2009, Nama was formed during the banking crisis to deal with non-performing property loans acquired from Irish banks. Beginning life with a large balance sheet, over time it sought to shrink it.
It was announced in July last year by then-Minister for Finance Jack Chambers that
Nama would this year wind down operations.
The agency has been paying into the Exchequer since 2013. Including €400m paid in last year, a total of €4.69 billion has already been paid into the fund. The remaining €800m will be transferred by the end of this year.
Nama generated €600m in cash during 2024, which brought the total cash generation from its inception to its end to €48.3 billion.
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The agency is on schedule to have completed its wind-down by December 2025.
Its chief executive Brendan McDonagh, who made headlines in recent months
due to his consideration for the role of Housing Tsar
, said that Nama's contribution to the Exchequer show how 'effective' it has been at recovering finances for the state.
'The Nama Board and my colleagues throughout the agency have always seen our role as set out by the legislation passed by the Oireachtas in 2009 as trying to do the very best we can on behalf of the taxpayer and the State,' he said.
'Every decision, every engagement with a debtor, every transaction – they were framed against a commercial backdrop of maximising the amount that we believed could be recovered for the State.'
He thanked his colleagues for the work they have undertaken since Nama's inception in 2009.
Some key points highlighted with its final report included Nama's housing output. Between 2014 and 2024, both years inclusive, the agency funded or facilitated the delivery of over 42,500 new homes. Over 14,500 were directly funded by Nama.
The report stated that there is potential to deliver a further 4,000 units on two major sites acquired by Nama in north Dublin and Kildare. The units will be retained in state ownership after Nama's dissolution.
Nama's Chairman Aidan Williams said that ultimately its 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.'
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