NAMA, the national asset management agency, was set up in the middle of one of the biggest economic crises in the history of the state. Its job was simple but very controversial: buy distressed assets from failed or failing property developers and nurse those assets back to some sort of value and sell them off. In the process it was supposed to save the then banks from an even worse fate.
NAMA will be wound down next year but before that it has returned €4.25 billion to Irish taxpayers and delivered 34,000 housing units. Joe was joined on the show by the Chief Executive of NAMA Brendan McDonagh.
