National Treasury Management Agency (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2026: Report Stage Dail Éireann — 2026-06-24 ============================================================ Pearse Doherty (SF), Donegal I move amendment No. 2: In page 8, between lines 13 and 14, to insert the following: “Report on transfer of staff to NTMA 7. The Minister shall, within 1 month of the passing of this Act, prepare and lay before both Houses of the Oireachtas a report detailing all of the transfer of staff from NAMA to the NTMA, provide information on salary and if any existing vacancies were filled or new positions created within the NTMA in addition to the resolution unit.”. I also raised this with the Minister of State on Committee Stage. The bumper salary of the CEO of NAMA has turned into an ongoing saga and nobody wants to answer questions on it. The Government's fingerprints is all over this because, obviously, it wanted that individual to end up being in a wee cosy job it has earmarked for him as the housing tsar but that all fell asunder as well. We have been stonewalled on this for months. Information should be available to the public as to whether the NAMA CEO is going to keep his €430,000 salary when he returns to the NTMA. That is a salary he has as a result of him being the CEO of NAMA. It was never intended for him to return from NAMA because the Government wanted him as the housing tsar until that fell apart, when the public was outraged that he would be paid so much to do what is essentially the Minister's job. When that fell through, the section in the heads of the Bill that said all staff of NAMA, when it was wound up, would be transferred to the resolution unit of the NTMA to handle the residual activity was taken out of the legislation when it was published. We all know that the NAMA CEO will return to the NTMA but not to the resolution unit. What we do not know is whether he is going to keep his salary despite no longer being a CEO. What we also do not know if there is an existing vacancy at senior management team level or if that job is going to be created for him. What we are missing here is transparency, and I believe it is a disgrace in regard to transparency. There should be no reason for secrecy or hidden information in this regard. We are talking about how public money is spent and how the Government is refusing to answer questions and has gone to great lengths to hide it from any real oversight. We are winding up NAMA. The Government produced legislation to say that everybody, including the CEO, was supposed to go into the resolution unit but it did not tell us at the time it published that legislation that it had another plan for the CEO. It wanted to second him and make him the housing tsar with a huge salary because it wanted its Minister, who was not up to the job, to have a dig-out from a housing tsar. Now, when that fell apart, the Government has had to create a new system and it will not give us any information on it. This is not on because it is public money at the end of the day. The NAMA CEO is now going to go into a senior role in the NTMA. Is it being created for him? Is there a vacancy? Is one being created to justify him keeping a salary of €430,000? I have no idea because the Government will not give us the information and it is a scandal, in my view. It is a murky ending that is all too fitting for the role NAMA has played in our society. Between Committee and Report Stages - because these questions were asked of him on Committee Stage - he should now know this information and he should put it on the public record in the House. I would be happy to hear that there is a vacancy with a reduced salary, that he will be taking that up, and that the Minister of State is transparent in giving us the criteria or the salary range. However, if it is just more stonewalling, what are we on the Opposition benches or the general public supposed to conclude from all of that? That is why we have tabled the amendment, which makes it clear that it is not acceptable that the Minister of State has made these types of arrangements and that we have within six months a report laid before the Houses of the Oireachtas detailing all the transfer of staff from NAMA to the NTMA, providing information on salary and whether any existing vacancies were filled or new positions created within the NTMA, in addition to the resolution unit. Outside of all that, we do not need the report. What we need is just a bit of transparency and a bit of upfrontness from the Government. It was because of all this dodgy cageyness and not being transparent with the public that the Government's plans for the CEO of NAMA fell through. It created a wee job for him, somebody the public perceived as an insider who was already in a well-paid position. That is no disrespect to the individual himself but the Government created the situation and put him in that situation. Now, the Minister of State is in a position where he is not being transparent. We do not know where the CEO is going. We do not know if there is a job being created. We do not know if a vacancy exists within the NTMA. This is all basic information that should be said in public. It should be said that there is a vacancy at senior management level in the NTMA, the salary range is between €150,000 and €250,000 for those types of management roles, and that is where he is going in because he was seconded from it. That would bring transparency to this situation or it might be a case, because I do not know, that a position is being created for the CEO, he will retain his salary of €400,000 or maybe he will take a wee cut of €50,000 - he will still be on €380,000 - and we are creating a job for him because the job does not exist, but he was not supposed to go there because the job the Government had for him fell through because he has handled it arseways. Therefore, will the Minister of State please tell us what is happening with the CEO of NAMA? --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-06-24/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:06+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-06-24