Colm Keena, brother of Paddy McKillen’s spokeswoman, Breda, pens a 2,100- word article on transfers to NAMA developers’ wives, today in the Irish Times. Paddy McKillen of course is, to date, the sole escapee from NAMA, and his wife Maura has escaped any intrusion into her affairs. But the lost souls languishing in NAMA enjoy no such privacy and there is quite a bit of detail today on transfers from husbands to wives, transfers back from wives to husbands and charges registered on property by NAMA. In today’s Irish Times article, Colm details 15 transfers from developers to their wives, three reverse-transfers from wives to husbands and eight NAMA registrations of charges against property associated with the wives of developers.
Colm stresses that no comment on the transactions detailed in his article today, was forthcoming from the developers and that “not all asset transfers made by wealthy debtors were done because people saw what was coming”
NAMA itself has stated that the majority of the Top 30 developers had transferred property to wives, though in respect of the total of 850 developers in NAMA, Minister Noonan recently said that a minority had transferred properties to wives. So it seems that spousal transfers might be concentrated in the cohort of the (formerly) wealthiest developers.
The reporting of transfers to spouses has frequently had the effect of generating outrage in those observing borrowers with enormous debts, now owing to the nation after the creation of NAMA; with implications that transfers have been effected to bilk creditors and to effectively squirrel wealth away which will subsequently be enjoyed by the borrower when the heat dies down, or indeed today through the wife’s wealth. Insult is added to injury with suggestions that NAMA is unable to deal with transfers if they occurred before NAMA came into being (November 2009 was when the NAMA Act became law, and December 2009 was when NAMA itself came into being); there are suggestions that transfers made before November 2009 can’t be touched by NAMA.
What is usually omitted from reporting is that NAMA can undo any transfer if it can prove that the transfer was effected to bilk creditors, and these legal rights have been long-established in this country through bankruptcy, conveyancing and property law. Beyond legal rights, NAMA also has colossal financial power and is generally the only source of finance for developers whose developments are starved of capital, so NAMA can bring more influence to bear on spousal transfers than might be strictly available to the agency from the vast body of law. Most of the charges registered by NAMA against property associated with developers’ wives are no more than three months old, so based on the properties detailed in today’s Irish Times article, NAMA seems to be stepping up its activities in relation to developer spouses.
Although there is a lot of padding in Colm’s article today (and some of the detail is available from Ronald Quinlan’s Sunday Independent remarkably similar article last December 2010), there obviously has been some new research which is joined with the information in the Quinlan article and represented in the table below. We can see that most of the transfers were effected before NAMA came into being. We can see that some transfers have been reversed and we can see that NAMA has been registering some charges against some of the property associated with wives of the developers, particularly in the past three months. There are two tables, which are identical, click to enlarge the first one, on some browsers not all of the data in the second table will be visible.
(Click to Enlarge)
| Developer | Wife | Date | Property | Type |
| Sean Dunne | Gayle | Dec-08 | 20 acres of land in Goatstown (Dublin) | transfer |
| Joe O’Reilly | Deirdre | Mar-09 | house Kerrymount Avenue (Foxrock) | transfer |
| Joe O’Reilly | Deirdre | Nov-09 | apartments at Riverhall (Castleknock) | transfer |
| Seamus Ross | Moira | Feb-09 | property at Lower Rathmines Road (Dublin) and Lucan (Dublin) | transfer |
| Seamus Ross | Moira | May-09 | land in Drumlish (Co Longford) | transfer |
| Seamus Ross | Moira | Jul-09 | house on Harrington Street, Dublin | transfer |
| Seamus Ross | Moira | Sep-09 | house at Haddington Road, Dublin | transfer |
| Gerry Gannon | Margaret | Jul-09 | property in the Village at the K Club | transfer |
| Gerry Gannon | Margaret | Oct-11 | property in the Village at the K Club | NAMA |
| Gerry Gannon | Margaret | 2009 | land in Ballyleague (Roscommon) | transfer |
| Gerry Gannon | Margaret | May-09 | 74 acres in Loughglynn (Roscommon) | transfer |
| Gerry Gannon | Margaret | 2009 | apts in the Anchorage and Spinnaker (Malahide) | transfer |
| Gerry Gannon | Margaret | May-09 | houses in Cabinteely, Templeogue, Artane, Clontarf | transfer |
| Gerry Gannon | Margaret | May-09 | commercial premises in Sutton | transfer |
| Gerry Gannon | Margaret | May-09 | family home on St Fintan’s Road (Sutton) | transfer |
| Gerry Gannon | Margaret | Dec-09 | 52 acres of land on Carrickbrack Road (Sutton) | transfer |
| Gerry Gannon | Margaret | 2009 | land in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown | transfer |
| Gerry Gannon | Margaret | May-09 | property at 36 Elgin Road, Dublin 4 | transfer |
| Gerry Gannon | Margaret | Aug-11 | property at 36 Elgin Road, Dublin 5 | NAMA |
| Liam Carroll | Roisin | Mar-09 | two houses in Mount Merrion, Dublin | transfer |
| David Daly | Mary | 2009 | €80m of assets, including €17m cash | transfer |
| Michael Cosgrave | Nadine | Dec-09 | properties in central Dublin | transfer |
| Michael Cosgrave | Nadine | Jul-11 | “other properties” | NAMA |
| Michael Cosgrave | Nadine | Jul-11 | 7 Hillside Drive (Rathfarnham) | re-transfer |
| Michael Cosgrave | Nadine | Jul-11 | 7 Hillside Drive (Rathfarnham) | NAMA |
| Joe Cosgrave | Denise | Sep-09 | property in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown, Dublin | transfer |
| Joe Cosgrave | Denise | Oct-11 | property in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown, Dublin | NAMA |
| Michael/Joe/Peter | Nadine/Denise/Oonagh | Jul-10 | Lands at Blanchardstown and Rathdown/ apts on Gardiner Street and Harcourt Green | transfer |
| Michael/Joe/Peter | Nadine/Denise/Oonagh | Aug-11 | Lands at Blanchardstown and Rathdown/ apts on Gardiner Street and Harcourt Green | re-transfer |
| Michael/Joe/Peter | Nadine/Denise/Oonagh | Aug-11 | Lands at Blanchardstown and Rathdown/ apts on Gardiner Street and Harcourt Green | NAMA |
| Nadine/Denise/Oonagh | 2011 | “number of properties” | NAMA | |
| Peter Cosgrave | Oonagh | Jul-11 | property in Sandycove, Dublin | re-transfer |
| Peter Cosgrave | Oonagh | Jul-11 | property in Sandycove, Dublin | NAMA |
NAMA Wine Lake 