Last week was a bad one for NAMA as it was revealed that an internal investigation by the Agency led to the uncovering of what was alleged to be a breach of its security with confidential details of loans being leaked by a former employee. NAMA has sued the employee, Enda Farrell and his wife Alice Kramer, it has also referred the matter to the Gardai and to the Data Protection Commissioner Billy Hawkes who incidentally is not commenting on the matter. NAMA is not commenting further on the matter saying it is sub judice and indeed it has been fast-tracked to the Commercial Court division of the High Court for hearing. It remains unclear what NAMA is doing to minimise the commercial impact of the alleged leak, which has the potential to cost the Agency and its stakeholders a lot of money.
A bad week for NAMA, but then yesterday, Ireland’s most-read (still) Sunday newspaper insinuates that earlier this year when challenged with a list of 60 questions, NAMA responded by reporting the newspaper to the Press Ombudsman. Yes, that’s what Brendan O’Connor insinuates in yesterday’s Sunday Independent, that the Sindo submitted a written list of 60 questions to the Agency in May and lo and behold, what did NAMA do, but complained of a separate matter involving the Sindo to the Press Ombudsman. We don’t have a list of the Sindo’s 60 questions but with such a volume of buckshot it is no surprise that some of the questions touched on the transparency and probity of NAMA’s dealings, something that is now set to take centre-stage as the Enda Farrell court case plays out.
To be clear when the word “insinuate” is used here, it is acknowledged that Brendan O’Connor writes in an introduction to a paragraph “Let me stress that the previous piece being brought to the Ombudsman was not connected in any way to the serving of the 60 questions on NAMA” but then goes on to write “It just all happened at the same time. So get the picture clear in your head before we go on. NAMA is arguing with us about an article. We, as part of our ongoing campaign to find out more, on your behalf, about this State agency, ask it a comprehensive list of questions for another article. NAMA refuses to answer even one of the questions and in and around the same time tells us that it is bringing the previous matter to the Press Ombudsman. The questions were about stuff like probity and NAMA staff’s potential conflicts of interest, among other things”
He goes on to write about “other odd behaviour from NAMA”. So it was “odd” that NAMA would make a complaint to the Press Ombudsman? Or it was “odd” that NAMA would make the complaint at that time? The article leaves open the suggestion that NAMA has abused the press complaint system by making a complaint to suppress or silence a newspaper from going about its business.
As for the NAMA complaint to the Press Ombudsman, NAMA is not commenting save to say its dealings with the Ombudsman are confidential. Not so the Sindo which has reported on the complaint at least twice, once by Ronald Quinlan and yesterday by Brendan O’Connor. What was the nature of the complaint and what article – Brendan O’Connor refers to a single “article” yesterday – was complained about? We don’t know but we do know that NAMA was unusually upset at reporting in the Sindo in February 2012 that it had jeopardised 230 jobs at a Google facility in Dublin. NAMA took the unusual step of issuing a press statement the next day in which it said “This story is completely inaccurate and misleading. NAMA wishes to state that no effort was made by the Sunday Independent to check the allegations being made with NAMA through its Press Office before the story was published and no opportunity was afforded the Agency to reject the allegations being made.”
If this was indeed the “article” then a timeline of publication in February, an informal complaint to the Sunday Independent in February/March and exchanges to resolve the matter in March/April followed by a conclusion in May that NAMA was not going to get satisfaction from the newspaper resulting in a complaint to the Press Ombudsman in May hardly makes the timing “odd” Trying to cack-handedly connect the 60 questions with the suggestion of a retaliation by NAMA to the Sindo’s valiant attempts to bring transparency to the Agency’s operations, and then trying to capitalise on the incident as somehow usurping the scoop at the Sunday Times in which the original Enda Farrell story of his purchase of a NAMA property was uncovered, stinks of the worst goal-hanging excesses of lazy journalism.
UPDATE: 17th September, 2012. It has been pointed out that there is generally a maximum three-month window between an article being published and a complaint being made to the Press Ombudsman John Horgan, which if the original article at issue was indeed the Sindo story in February 2012 would mean the deadline for making a complaint would expire in….. May 2012!
UPDATE: 17th September, 2012. A credible source has said that the article complained of by NAMA to the Press Ombudsman was NOT the Ronald Quinlan article on Google or indeed any other article by journalist Ronald Quinlan.
NAMA Wine Lake 
I really don’t see what the issue is with NAMA and that fellow. In the UK if you are buying a house you can go on-line and see exactly what was paid for the property last time it was sold.
As far as I can see this is a delusional application of an Official Secret’s Act on something that ‘has’ happened. Which in finance might as well be pre-war for all the connection to today. OR, we’ve the projections. Which, well, who the flippin hell knows what ‘will’ occur.
This is for all the world like looking at a bit of gold saying it was worth ‘X’ last year and having a flow sheet saying it will be worth ‘y’ next. None of it matters an iota. All that matters is what someone will pay ‘today’.
This is actually very worrying for it is exposing the delusional belief that some gobshites opinion has ‘real’ currency. And it also seems the volume of time these idiots have spent forming veils is to be compounded by the time spent protecting the shreds of the things.
I assume Brendan O’Connor has a track record of hard-hitting, factual, professional journalism to be taking the moral high ground here.
Oh wait…
This is the same Brendan O’Connor who in July 2007 wrote:
The smart, ballsy guys are buying up property right now
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/the-smart-ballsy-guys-are-buying-up-property-right-now-1047118.html
July. 2007.
The Enda Farrell saga is not the only scandal, there are others waiting in the wings. With 200 plus employees the scandals are building up through the “buddy” system – not through the developer / portfolio manager relationship. By this, I mean that NAMA is leaking like a sieve as information on debtors and portfolio details is passed to portfolio managers’ friends. A lot of manure has to hit the fan yet. The seeds are being sown and Enda Farrell is not alone, just one of the less discrete. However, when a debtor hears details relating to his /her portfolio that are not in the public arena being discussed by third parties with agendas……….
BTW, Enda Farrell’s story does beggar the question as to how anyone in an organisation handling sensitive commercial information could email a comprehensive list of that information out to a third party. If it was in the private sector, heads would roll, including the heads of those at the top and that of the IT manager.
@WSTT
“… I mean that NAMA is leaking like a sieve as information on debtors and portfolio details is passed to portfolio managers’ friends.”
A very accurate comment above that I can confirm from personal experience (not to my detriment or benefit I hasten to add). Ireland really is a small place and you won’t find any NAMA employee who is more than two degrees of separation (at most) from someone who had his finger in the property bubble pie.
By the way, how stupid was this guy Enda Farrell to email the spreadsheet to his missus! Wouldn’t any idiot know you should just save it to a memory stick or, depending on the security settings, you would just EDIT>COPY and paste the details into a new spreadsheet or even a WORD document and then save it to a personal memory stick and bring it home.
If the IT were run properly, the external drives and USB ports would be locked down, and access to data restricted to role and comprehensively audited. Anybody accessing anything like a comprehensive list outside of their remit should have gone up in lights.
Totally agree with WSTT, IT have questions to answer. But then again, we seem to live in a country that is only just coming to grips with encrypting sensitive data on laptops.
@Bunbury
You are totally correct. Most of the inmates in NAMA come from property backgrounds. They do have many personal connections in that area. It’s only a matter of time……
According to your own corrections you got this story wrong but still have the article headline which gives the wrong impression. Bad form and very sloppy namawinelake
@Thomas, you’ve lost me. There are two updates to the blogpost, one which refers to the 3-month period in which complaints are generally supposed to be submitted to the Press Ombudsman and the other update is a clarification – not a correction – that the article complained about by NAMA to the Press Ombudsman, the identity of which was speculated about for sound reasons above, is not the one which NAMA was so vociferous in criticising in February (and indeed subsequently). Neither update has any bearing on the blogpost title, which is based on the Brendan O’Connor article.
Stepping back from the details, I do not believe that state organizations like NAMA should be able to complain the the Press Ombudsman. The Ombudsman was not set up to protect the powerful and privileged, and should not be corralled into doing so.
As always WSTT you’re on the mark.
NAMA’s duty of care to the debtors is being diluted. Internal documents, business plans etc are rumored to be in circulation, if not for sale to the highest bidder!
The potential fallout of this might actually mean Enda, Michael et al might actually have to do something about NAMA for a change.
Also thought it was interesting seeing Pat Rabbitt having lunch with the former NAMA member from the North when his dessert was so rudely interrupted by those pesky protestors. Theyre mixed up in this whether or not they like it!