EMPLOYEES FROM THE National Management Asset Agency (NAMA) were paid just under €700,000 in termination payments and gardening leave in the past nine months, as the agency continues efforts to wind down its operations totally by December of this year. 

One employee received a redundancy payment of between €150,00 and €175,000, while three were paid between €75,000 and €100,000, and another two were paid between €25k and €50k. 

The total paid in redundancies over 9 months to eight employees was €562,261. 

The NTMA (National Treasury Management Agency) is the actual employer of NAMA staff – as the agency falls under its control.

The NTMA pays ‘gardening leave’ to employees when they are transitioning to a new role and there is a potential conflict of interest, i.e. when they are going to work in the private sector. It means that for a period of time, that person is on the NTMA’s payroll, though they are no longer working there.

Between 1 September 2024 and 1 May of this year, the NTMA paid for gardening leave to eight NAMA employees, amounting to €134,265 overall. 

Five people were paid under €25,000 while another three were paid between €25,000 and €50,000. 

Overall, in the nine month period, eleven employees left NAMA, leaving a remaining headcount of 78 staff members. 

Nama staff are going to be reassigned to work in the resolution unit within the NTMA, which will manage NAMA’s remaining portfolio and legal cases. 

The Minister for Finance has said that the NTMA has not made any “final decisions” on whether the remaining staff will be offered work within the agency. 

The payments made in the last nine months are on top of €20m already made in termination payments from 2015 to March 2024.

The agency has had a redundancy and retention scheme in place since 2015, which was designed to keep staff in place given that their contracts are likely to end with its dissolution.

NAMA, which is often referred to as the ‘bad bank’ was the Government agency set up to take over property loans from Ireland’s bust banks in 2009. 

It purchased almost €32 bn worth of bad property development loans from Ireland’s banks after the financial crash in 2008. 

It’s expected to have made a surplus of €5.2 bn by then.

In response to a recent parliamentary question Paschal Donohoe, the Minister for Finance, said that ten current NAMA employees will work within the resolution unit, and it will be headed up by someone other than the current CEO Brendan McDonagh. 

McDonagh is expected to return to his former NTMA role if he does not take redundancy, but it’s not yet clear if he will keep his current €430,000 salary if he does.

Donohoe said that no “final arrangements” have been made for the 78 current employees to take up work in the NTMA, and that the majority of them are on “specified purpose contracts” that will expire with the dissolution of NAMA, and a “period of garden leave”. 

NAMA is attempting to deleverage as much of its portfolio as possible by December, but it also has 16 ongoing legal cases in which it is directly involved, and 9 cases in which it is not directly involved, which is stopping associated tied up in the cases from being realised.  

The CEO has said that these assets have a combined value of less than €10 m. 

It also has more than 1,000 social houses that are to be transferred over, and land with the capacity for 4,000 houses.