National Treasury Management Agency (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2026: Second Stage
Seanad Éireann — 2026-07-02
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Robert Troy (FF), Longford-Westmeath

I thank the Senators for their contributions, which were all largely in support of the Bill, recognising that winding down NAMA is the right thing to do. Sinn Féin has been co-operating by putting forward amendments. We will not accept them and we have set out the rationale for our belief that they are not necessary. Over the lifetime of NAMA, there has been continuous monitoring, overview and oversight, which is right and proper, as other Senators have said. NAMA's quarterly and annual accounts were laid before the Oireachtas and audited by the Comptroller and Auditor General. Statutory five-year reviews were conducted by the Department of Finance and the Comptroller and Auditor General has also undertaken reviews independently, the most recent of which was last month. In addition, the Fitzgerald review provided further independent assessment of NAMA's strategy and outcome and found that NAMA's approach was appropriate. For all those reasons, we have not been in a position to accept an Teachta Doherty's amendment.
Sometimes, when Sinn Féin portrays NAMA and the sale of assets, it compares today's economy with the economy at the time NAMA was set up when, in many instances, you could not give away property, let alone sell it. NAMA was set up to take the bad loans from the banks so that the banks could get back to lending and we could repair or economy. Our economy, thankfully, has been repaired and is functioning now. We have full employment and we are running budget surpluses. As a consequence, we have the resources necessary to make the interventions in housing, the area Senator O'Reilly alluded to. The largest number of social houses on record was provided last year. We have brought in new measures, such as the affordable purchase scheme. Senator Casey strongly advocated for affordable housing in our party, and that scheme was introduced a number of years ago. The shared equity scheme was introduced to help bridge the gap and the help to buy scheme, which was introduced by the previous Government, has continued in recent years.
In all of this, we recognise that more needs to be done to help people into housing, help them acquire their own house and help those who cannot acquire their own house to have access to a permanent house through the provision of social housing. One would wonder whether we would have been in position to do all of that were it not for the intervention and the correct and difficult decisions that were taken at the time. Sometimes people portray that time as if we were in isolation. There had been a global financial crash. The oldest banks in the world in America had failed. We were not alone, but we took the right decisions and because of those decisions, we are in a much better position today.
NAMA has provided benefits. It transferred €4.7 billion to the Exchequer and paid €440 million in corporation tax. Land with the potential to deliver 7,000 homes and 1,366 social homes was delivered to the Land Development Agency. In the overall scheme of things, we are drawing a line under what was a difficult time in our history and in the economy. We are now in a much better position thanks to the decisions taken at the time. I thank Senators for their support today and look forward to engaging with them further on Committee Stage and Report Stage next week.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-07-02/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:09+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-07-02