NAMA: When The Government Gave Thousands Of Homes Away

The news this week that the government will be jetting off to a vulture fund conference in Cannes should be no surprise to anyone who’s paid attention to their attitude to housing - everything for the market.

Michael Martin hit back at those who criticised their planned attendence at the “Marché International des Professionels de l’Immoblier 2026” saying they needed both state and private invesment in housing.

But the claim they balance public and private is just a barefaced lie. At one point after the bank bailout the National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) had tens of thousands of acres of land, tens of thousands of commercial properties and thousands of homes in its hands.

They held over 100 hotels, 20 golf courses and 327 unfinished housing estates.

They couldn’t wait to offload them to property developers and vulture funds. Just look at the list of rich parasites who got their hands on all this land and property at bargain basement prices:

The Project Platinum portfolio, made up of key Dublin office blocks, was sold off to U.S. vulture Blackstone in 2014. This fund was set up in 1985 and has been mired in controveries ranging from chopping down rainforest to using child labour to clean in U.S. meat packing factories.

The Project Eagle portfolio was a Northern Ireland loan portfolio of over 900 properties that was sold to U.S. vulture fund Cerberus Capital Management in April 2014 for around €1.6 billion.

The Project Arrow portfolio with a value of €6.2 billion was also sold to Cerberus Capital Management in 2015. They got almost 2,000 properties and 43% of them were residential.

The NAMA Project Jewel portfolio included loans that were secured by Irish retail assets, including the Dundrum Town Centre. These loans were sold to a joint venture between British fund Hammerson plc and Allianz Real Estate GmbH in 2015.

The Project Emerald and Project Ruby portfolios, with a value of approximately €4 billion, were sold off to U.S. vulture fund Oaktree Capital in 2016.

The Project Tolka portfolio was a portfolio of loans secured by Irish offices and hotels, worth €1.4 billion, these loands were secured against prime Dublin commercial properties like the Burlington Plaza, Belfield Office Park, and the former Harcourt Street Children’s Hospital, it was sold to U.S. fund Colony Capital in 2016.

Project Lee saw NAMA sell a debt of €300 million which was secured on retail assets in Cork and was purchased by Deutsche Bank in 2018. This portfolio included loans secured on the Mahon Retail Park and apartments in Cork.

While the state was facillitating a feeding frenzy for these vultures the record of public housing builds over those years speaks for itself: In 2014 the state and local authorities built only 285 homes, in 2015 they built just 75. The state intentionally limited the supply of public housing in order to help the private sector monopolise housing and make a profit.

These profits came at our expense as these policies led to a year on year rise in rents, evictions and homelessness. In 1975, local authorities in Ireland built 8,794 social housing units. By 1990 they built only 1,003. By 1998 they were forced to up that to half the 1970s level, building 3,000 homes a year.

But this was still far behind social need and well below the level of building in the 1970s. In 1975, the state built about 2.75 social homes for every 1,000 people. By 2000, despite the Celtic Tiger boom, this dropped to only 0.58 homes per 1,000 people.

When the 2008 crash came they bailed out the banks and pulled funding out of social housing provision. Supply collapsed as the private sector sacked construction workers and the state refused to step into the gap. They stopped building too and we’re still paying for this criminal action.

Under a planned economy there would never be a situation were construction workers are unemployed at the same time as there is a massive social demand for housing. When profit is God workers are only set to work when a developer or vulture can make a significant profit. They don’t care about housing need, only profit.

We can’t run a decent society on those lines. It doesn’t work for our class, the working class. It only works for the rich. We need a rebellion to put the working class in the driving seat of the socialist, democratically planned economy. Nothing else will finally end the housing crisis.