Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 18 June 2015
68. Deputy Clare Daly asked the Minister for Finance with regard to the operation of the National Asset Management Agency, the reason decisions regarding whether a property will go on the market or not are taken by the receiver; and if he considers it best value for the taxpayer that all properties for sale should be publicly advertised, in order that all citizens and potential buyers have an opportunity to purchase them. [24235/15]
Amharc ar fhreagraThe timing of a property sale by a NAMA debtor or receiver is based on a professional assessment of the market in the context of NAMA's statutory commercial objective to maximise the return on its acquired loans and the property and other assets securing those loans. NAMA requires that the sale of property by debtors and receivers is, as with the sale of loans by the Agency itself, conducted by professionally qualified selling agents on a competitive and, wherever feasible, open market basis. The marketing strategy for any given asset is determined by a range of factors, including asset class, value and location.
I note in this respect the Comptroller and Auditor General's (C&AG) recent findings, which are set out in the C&AG's third special report on NAMA, that almost all NAMA property disposals examined by it had been sold through an open competitive process or, in the case of transactions involving other public bodies, with testing of disposal prices against market valuation. The C&AG concluded that this provides assurance that "prices obtained were the best on offer in the market at the time a property was sold".
I note that the Deputy has not referenced a particular transaction or property. If the Deputy has a query surrounding a specific sale, NAMA can be contacted directly through the Agency's dedicated email address for members of the Oireachtas - oir@nama.ie.
