Brendan McDonagh should consider issuing a diktat to his staff that the only yachts they’re to be seen on are ones being repossessed from NAMA developers. The Mail on Sunday is investigating claims that NAMA’s Head of Portfolio Management, John Mulcahy, was holidaying on businessman (and sometimes developer) Paul Coulson’s yacht in the Mediterranean. The Mail are pursuing the story with some gusto visiting the homes of all nine NAMA board members (“I appreciate your job but my family is my family” Brendan McDonagh is reported as saying when doorstepped). The Mail even rang John Mulcahy at home after 9pm interrupting his family dinner apparently to discuss the claims and John hung up on them.
The Mail’s story comes two days after NAMA-bound developer, Paddy Kelly, revealed that it was John Mulcahy who valued his property in Ballsbridge at €350m in 2007, only for it to fall in value to €80m two and a half years later. NAMA had previously taken steps to distance John Mulcahy from the valuation of the Irish Glass Bottle site at €412m.
John Mulcahy is arguably the agency’s most senior property man and has had a sterling and long career in property. Insinuations about his involvement in the Irish Glass Bottle site have overlooked the fact that he seemed to get a fabulous result for his client, Paul Coulson’s South Wharf PLC. In restrospect property values during the property boom were highly inflated and some property may be worth 2% of its value just 4 years ago. However this overlooks the professional responsibility of a valuer – to assess what the property would fetch between willing buyers and willing sellers with both parties being in possession of perfect knowledge – and the fact is that John Mulcahy’s valuations (if we believe Paddy Kelly) were no different in character to those of his peers.
The Mail story does highlight an issue for NAMA which is if NAMA is to attract experienced staff, it will need accept that the experience of those staff will include a period in our history which is now having devastating consequences on our economy. John Mulcahy’s value to NAMA will include his vast address book, and we will expect him to use that address book when seeking to maximise the return to the taxpayer from NAMA’s assets. Should the fact that Paul Coulson is apparently in that address book be a source of concern? No, I would say – Paul Coulson is apparently one of the businessmen to emerge from the property crash in a financially healthy condition and he may conceivably be a buyer of NAMA property or an investor in NAMA developments. The only way for NAMA to deal with this issue would have been to employ people who were not involved in Ireland’s property industry which would have meant that there were either a) inexperienced in property or b) inexperienced in Ireland and do we really want people who are learning on the job with a €50bn State exposure or who don’t know the players in Irish property (some, perhaps many, are still investing and expanding) – sure the likes of India’s WGA may invest in our property but the betting would be that much of the investment will be domestically sourced.
So this story should teach NAMA two lessons – one optics are significant, no yachts, fine wines, beef Wellingtons. And two, take steps to demonstrate that the conflict of interest codes are transparent, enforced and worthy of public trust.
NAMA Wine Lake 
Comment:
Is there still anyone gullible enough to believe that the whole NAMA fraud in the best interest of the country
When we have the board members of that den of corruption and the likes of Enda Kenny, been obviously fated by the very people they are supposed to be independently assessing
The means of these developers with the view to getting the best deal for the taxpayers of this country
Not even one mile from my home a woman with 5 children home is been repossessed by the bank,
To date I have not seen the local bank manager been fated in her home with tea and cake
Nor was she invited to a round of golf at the K-Club by the repressors of her home
These Latest actions of a member of the board of NAMA only proves to me that this set up (NAMA) is only a boys club for the rich and the boys will and are been well looked after
Even the latest report coming from Europe a-la the bank stress test clearly shows that the Irish government have allowed NAMA to over pay to the tune of billions for the toxic assets NAMA is getting from the gangsters in the country’s banks.
There is clearly a policy to allow the banks to recoup their gambling losses by a deliberately hiking of interest rates and squeezing their customers dry even at the cost of making some of the homeless.
Along with the recently highlighted proposes tolls on the national roads network, thenew tax on every home, the new water charges, and now new cuts to come in the public health services, and our children’s education
We are now one of the highest taxed people in the western hemisphere and the shower in the Dail is not finished yet!
It’s time for a complete sweep out of the leaches that are residing there.
Why are there no protests on the streets by the so called opposition parties?
Why are the Unions not on the streets with their downtrodden members?
Because the leaders of these instustions are all part of the same corrupt system and they are all drinking from the same trough!
Remember FAS there were top Union officials and opposition party members on the board that helped themselves for years to various generous perks
This is true of all state boards and guanos
Take action to-day get started and talk to your friends and neighbours and get organise and field your own new candidates in the next general elections. But please do not vote in any of the current lot back into the Dail as a sheet of paper could not pass between their policies
It’s time we got ordinary people to go into the Dail and work for the people that sent them there and not get quick merchants with expense accounts that would pay the dole for twenty men or more every year
Ordinary people and not friends of friends should be call to serve on the boards of the various state bodies and any other areas that are in need of manpower after all its the peoples service and it’s the ordinary people who are paying the salaries through their taxes
we need to bring back to the people of Ireland ,”A peoples government” and the constitution must be amended again so that the people can fire any and all servants of the people if they are found not to be capable of carrying out their duties to the satisfaction of the Irish people
These changes must also include the judiciary as I believe no arm of public service is above the soverne people
It is just not acceptable that so called servants of the people can walk away and leaves total devastation behind them as a result of their corrupt practices or incompetence and then expect the Taxpayers of this country to pay them pensions for the rest of their lives
I say no this cannot go on and must be stopped and reversed
The country cannot afford these entitlements voted in to law by self serving Law makers and politicians anymore
It is obscene to think that Unelected Taoiseach Brian Cowen is one of the highest paid politicians in the world and his incompetence is just mind boggling!
Change is coming because the people have had enough. If enough of this new kind of public servant (TD) is voted into the next Dail, no politician will get rich serving the people and no politician will receive more than one pension and no pension will be more than the average pension and only paid out at the national pensionable age period!
I believe it should be an honour to serve your country and not expect the hard pressed taxpayers to fund you for the rest of your life having done you service for your country.
“Transparency” is the key word here, and we’re not getting it. As you have highlighted on numerous occasions we haven’t even got a national house price database. NAMA is just another name for recapitalising the banks. The haircuts being applied to the property valuations is scarier than the actual property valuations themselves. One way or another we’re going to pay for the banks folly.
Although Conflicts of Interest are not a mandatory report item (the NAMA Act – http://www.attorneygeneral.ie/eAct/2009/a3409.pdf – talks about it being in NAMA’s discretion – section 30(2)), there was no information in the first NAMA quarterly report (available at http://www.nama.ie/Publications/2010/Section55QuarterlyReport31March2010.pdf) on conflicts of interest. Maybe there weren’t any and indeed the quarterly report was for the period up to 31st March 2010 so perhaps there hadn’t been any real engagement with developers etc to give rise to conflicts – however NAMA included other information headings and left the detail blank which indicates that they won’t produce a Conflicts of Interest section in future even if there are any.
If it were a mandatory inclusion in the Quarterly Report then that would held build confidence. Including NAMA within the Freedom of Information framework would also help (though I think everyone recognises that confidential commercial information can’t be disclosed, much the same as applies now to other State agencies that are included in FoI). Producing a record of any hospitality received (which would include holidaying on a developer’s yacht – the subject of the claim in the Mail) would also help.
With respect to the House Price Database, you can find the latest news on the “progress” of the HPD at
https://namawinelake.wordpress.com/about/house-price-database/
The only real way I can see of pushing the government on this is through the IAVI, the only private sector (and nominally independent) member of the loose working group that the government say has been arranged to progress the HPD. The working group has no terms of reference, timeline for delivery of the HPD or indeed any legal or financial support from the government – the IAVI give the impression they are being used as a fig leaf of property-industry respectability to disguise the fact that the HPD is not being seriously considered by the government – perhaps the IAVI’s members and the public could help persuade the IAVI executive that they should take the HPD more seriously….