It’s been over two years since the NAMA CEO Brendan McDonagh told an Oireachtas committee that NAMA may eventually have to bulldoze constructed property, and this afternoon, the Agency has made its first demolition announcement – 12 apartments in a single apartment block on the Gleann Riada estate off the Strokestown Road in Ballyminion Longford are destined for the wrecking-ball, it seems. NAMA says that the site is currently being prepared for demolition which is scheduled to take three weeks.
The Gleann Riada estate was built by Northern Irish developer Alastair Jackson and his company Eassda Ireland Limited, formerly known as Keygo Properties Limited. Alastair has since been declared bankrupt in the UK and his companies have agreed a €4m tax settlement with the Revenue Commissioners.
It is only the one apartment block that is affected by NAMA’s announcement this afternoon, and there are 90 other properties – all houses – on the estate which are not affected. The 12 apartments are in one block, and NAMA says “none of which have been sold and which have fallen into disrepair”. Lisney has been the property receiver. NAMA claims that its decision to bulldoze is driven by a need to make the estate safe for other residents.
NAMA says that it is “involved with a relatively small number of so-called Ghost Estates (about 10%) and our priority in those where we do have an interest is first-and-foremost to make them safe for residents. Where it is uneconomic to finish-out an estate or a part of an estate or if the Local Authority deems it to be structurally unsafe we will invest our resources in demolishing the relevant structure and ensure that it is made safe for other residents. This will benefit residents of those estates and make the estate safe from a Health and Safety perspective”
A list of questions was submitted to NAMA including details of the apartments and their state of disrepair, sales and marketing efforts made and the cost of the demolition work which NAMA says it is funding. If there is a response, it will be posted as an update.
Allsop Space is selling another partly finished estate in Kerry in its auction next week; last month it sold an incomplete estate in Ballyjamesduff,countyCavan.
NAMA Wine Lake 
Said resources on ghost estaes €3m…120312.
Wow…. Too many negative vibes! I’m surprised at Lisneys. Is this the best that all the experts there and in NAMA could come up with?
“… fallen into disrepair” – Shows how useless receivers are at managing property.
i wonder who will pay for keeping this apts off the market? I know renters and tax payers.
And so, the great state purge of excess properties begins. Those left holding pails had best hope theirs isn’t turned upside down.
“which have fallen into disrepair”.
So they just ‘fell into disrepair’. How tragic.
When did they fall into ‘disrepair’?
What did the ‘property receiver’ (Lisney) do to prevent them falling into disrepair?
Were they in receipt of fees for allowing it to fall into disrepair.
What state of repair were they in when NAMA first took the related loans from the banks?
What did the bank do to preserve the state of its collateral.
Maybe we just let everything ‘fall into a state of disrepair’ and then just bring in the wrecking ball.
That will solve everything! and the property receivers will become rich on the fees in the interim.
@Joseph, maybe it will give us another occasion for a NAMA performance art installation – the NAMA bulldozer and wrecking ball demolishing the block and the 300-400 families in Longford on the housing list, some for more than five years, can look on through the expensively erected wire fence.
I would be very surprised if NAMA hadn’t examined the finances of this block very carefully but the announcement does leave much concern that something very stupid is afoot.
I think this block may have been in rag order long before it was Nama’s responsibility
It may make sense to knock certain buildings down.
An apartment in Longford would have a negative value to me. Though I think there should be a sequence of ‘social dividend’ options that should be explored before demolition. Local authorities should be offered this if they are paying private landlords for social housing. Or it may be an improvement on existing council houses. There are also groups like Habitat for Humanity that might be interested.