MOST OF THOSE who are in debt to the National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) are co-operating with the State body, chairman Frank Daly has insisted today.
Daly was speaking before the Oireachtas Joint Committee on the Implementation of the Good Friday Agreement where he earlier said that NAMA is to roll out a vendor finance scheme for commercial property buyers in Northern Ireland.
He also disclosed that the agency has so far approved the sale of €7 billion worth of assets in an attempt to recoup money for the taxpayer.
NAMA was set up in 2009 under the State guarantee of the banks to act as a ‘bad bank’. It has acquired €75 billion in bad property development loans from banks in exchange for government bonds.
Daly also told the Committee that NAMA had assessed business plans of 700 debtors covering 97 per cent of its loans, made 6,000 individual credit decisions since March 2010, and approved close to €1 billion in advances of working and development capital.
“NAMA is not a debt collection agency but let’s not be naive enough to think that we don’t have debts to collect on behalf of our people,” he told the Committee. But we are working constructively with debtors in every case that we can because that is the only way to deliver a successful outcome.”
He added: “In the majority of cases we are working with debtors to maximise the value that can be realised from their loans and associated assets; so they see the path ahead – however difficult that may be.”
Last month it was disclosed that over a quarter of the debtors – 188 – who are under the direct control of NAMA have transferred assets to family members or overseas in a bid to put them out of the reach of the agency.
Daly said that enforcement proceedings against debtors were only taken as a less resort and only in cases where other approaches had not delivered effective results.
He said that debtors fell into three categories: those that are actively co-operating with the agency and contributing to working out the loans; those who want to co-operate but cannot contribute meaningfully to their loans; and those who claim to be co-operating but whose actions do not reflect this.
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