Government Hails NAMA “A Great Success!”

NAMA, the National Asset Management Agency, has published its final report claiming it has had 15 years of making profits. The agency is due to be dissolved this year after 17 years in operation.

It was set up in 2009 to bail out developers who had gone bust. NAMA took on the bad debts of the developers who’d crashed the economy and crucially took over their land ownership. This made the Irish state the biggest owner of undeveloped land in the country. Most of it was already zoned for housing.

They didn’t use it for housing but instead offloaded it as quickly as they could. Only 3,000 social homes in total have been delivered on NAMA lands. In 2016, estimations were that NAMA-controlled lands could yield between 84,000 and 140,000 homes.

A 2021 analysis suggested the agency still held over 500 hectares of residential development land capable of supporting around 80,000 residential units. The state refused to use this land ot build homes, building on 75 homes in 2015 for example.

Instead of building public housing for workers most of the land was sold off to private developers. They have made millions in profits off the backs of working class people who have been forced to buy or rent homes at astronomical prices.

For example, Quintain (now named Evara) bought land from NAMA in several locations including Adamstown and Clonburris. It’s the Irish subsidiary of LoneStar, the US private equity firm owned by billionaire John Grayken. Evara doesn’t publish its profits, but as a large developer building thousands of homes in Dublin they are expected to be making millions. Cairn Homes, which has also built homes in the same area made a profit after tax of €132.77 million in 2025.

NAMA didn’t just own land but also owned over 10,000 apartments with a rent roll of €100 million a year. The “Orange portfolio”, which included Lansdowne Apartments (Drimnagh) and Beacon South Quarter (Sandyford) was sold to IRES REIT for €211 million. NAMA made IRES REIT Ireland’s biggest landlord.

Project Eagle in 2014 saw NAMA sell all its holdings in the North to the US vulture firm Cerberus Capital Management for approximately £1.3 billion (€1.6 billion). Project Tower saw them sell a €1.8 billion value portfolio tied to the property developer Michael O’Flynn, which was sold to the US investment fund Blackstone in 2014.

These sales continued under names like “Project Aspect”, “Project Holly”, “Project Club”. NAMA even sold a 50% stake in the Dundrum Town Centre to Allianz. Former developers didn’t just get a bailout on their bad debts but some were put on NAMA’s payroll. In 2014 NAMA paid out €11 million in allowances to former developers.

Since then many of the developers and funds who bought land off NAMA have been hoarding land rather than building homes. Private developers can maximise profits by artificially increasing house prices through refusing to build on zoned land.

The only way to stop this is to nationalise all land, the very opposite of what NAMA did. Monopolising land is a way to inflate house prices and state ownership of land would dramatically reduce housing costs including rents.

The chief executive of NAMA Brendan McDonagh said he was “proud knowing that we fulfilled the complex mandate given to us by the Oireachtas”. Anyone who says they’re proud of bailing out developers and facilitating the housing crisis is nothing but a mouthpiece for, and a puppet of, the rich.

The Tanaiste Simon Harris said that NAMA “has been recognised internationally as one of the most successful State-backed asset management agencies of its kind,". He is correct that it’s been recognised as a success, by vulture funds and private developers, but it’s been a disaster for the working class.

The solution to the housing crisis was there. The Irish state is a state for the rich, for the developers, the bankers and the bosses. Fianna Fáil/Fine Gael governments work hand in glove with unelected bureaucrats to facilitate the rich getting get richer.

Instead of thousands of homes for the working class NAMA has given us a housing crisis and record profits for developers. The only way to end the housing crisis and the profiteering of developers is to put workers in the driving seat of a planned economy.

Then we could nationalise the land in the hands of these developers and funds and build tens of thousands of homes.