NAMA denies status as public body

Further to my request to Anglo Irish Bank under the European Communities (Access to Information on the Environment) Regulations, I simultaneously requested information from the National Asset Management Agency (NAMA).

I specifically sought the information under SI133/2007, the transposition of the 2003 Directive into Irish Law.

In an email dated February 3, 2010, to NAMA, I sought:

1) A breakdown of all assets, loans and properties due to be
transferred to the Agency. This should include the value placed on the
asset and by whom. It should include the addresses of all assets and
properties.

2) A breakdown of all properties and property loans currently owned or
controlled by the Agency.

3) Minutes of board meetings relating to the transfer of assets and
properties to the Agency. The date range for this request is January
2009 to January 2010, inclusive.

In an email dated February 16, 2010, I received an email from NAMA stating:

Upon due consideration of your request and the AIE Regulations, we do
not propose to accede to your request as we do not consider that the
National Asset Management Agency is a “public authority” within the
definition set out in the AIE Regulations.

As is my right under the Regulations I then sought an internal review of that decision. I argued:

You state that you do not consider NAMA to be a “public authority” within the AIE regulations. However under the Regulations a public body is defined as:

(a) government or other public administration, including public advisory
bodies, at national, regional or local level,
(b) any natural or legal person performing public administrative functions
under national law, including specific duties, activities or services in
relation to the environment, and
(c) any natural or legal person having public responsibilities or functions,
or providing public services, relating to the environment under the
control of a body or person falling within paragraph (a) or (b),

In addition:

(vi) a board or other body (but not including a company under the Com-
panies Acts) established by or under statute,
(vii) a company under the Companies Acts, in which all the shares are
held—
(I) by or on behalf of a Minister of the Government,
(II) by directors appointed by a Minister of the Government,
(III) by a board or other body within the meaning of paragraph (vi), or
(IV) by a company to which subparagraph (I) or (II) applies, having
public administrative functions and responsibilities, and pos-
sessing environmental information;

The NAMA board consists of 9 members, appointed by the Minister for Finance. The chief executives of NAMA and the NTMA (ex-officio) are appointed by the Minister. This alone would clearly indicate that NAMA is a public body. (vi) would appear to be particularly relevant.

On March 19, I received the results of the internal review. NAMA stated:

I have conferred on this issue with the Head of Legal and Tax within the National Asset Management Agency. Under her advice our response to this issue still remains the same. I trust this answers your query.

I disagreed with the decision and have now appealed the matter to the Office of the Commissioner for Environmental Information, which cost €150, kindly donated by readers. It strikes me as odd, to say the least, that the body established by the Government to handle property loans worth an estimated €54 billion, does not consider itself to be a public body for the purposes of the European directive in question. NAMA and its parent body, the NTMA, also do not fall under the FOI Act. The entire process is opaque, and the public has absolutely no recourse to information besides through this European Directive.

It is worth noting three critical points:

1) The definition of a public body within the Regulations is extremely broad. NAMA clearly is (a) government or other public administration, including public advisory bodies, at national, regional or local level. But NAMA felt they did not full under this definition.

2) The definition of environmental information under the Regulations is also extremely broad. Lands owned or controlled by NAMA (as a public body), is clearly environmental information. A cursory look at the application of the Directive in other jurisdictions would clearly show this to be the case.

3) If NAMA is deemed by the OCEI to be a public body, then any information related to the environment would fall within a request for information. NAMA may argue that such information is ‘commercially sensitive’ under the Regulations, but as this is entirely public money at issue, one must ask to whom is it commercially sensitive.

If the OCEI were to decide that NAMA is a public body alone (which was the main reason for my initial request), it would open up the body to much greater scrutiny. I await their decision with interest.

Anglo bondholders

This has always been one of the great mysteries of Irish banking since the bailout. Who are the bondholders? The lack of information is a gift to conspiracy theorists, but also poses questions around who exactly the Irish public guaranteed in September 2008.

It occurred to me that it might be worth looking through the archives in relation to bond issuance, and in relation to any property deals Anglo was involved in in the years prior to nationalisation, such as:

In 2006 it was reported that: “The group’s North American business, approaching its 10th year in operation, has originated loans in excess of $15 billion and at their last reporting date of March 31, 2006, had current outstanding commitments of $4.5 billion.”

Continue reading “Anglo bondholders”

Anglo Irish Bank – A request for information

Readers will be aware that Anglo Irish Bank was nationalised in January 2009. This came after the bank guarantee scheme of September/October 2009. Anglo became a prescribed body under the Ethics in Public Office Act last summer, which was expanded through a statutory instrument in February 2010 to cover many subsidiaries of the bank.

However, Anglo has not become a prescribed body under the Freedom of Information Act 1997/2003. This would require the signature of Finance Minister, Brian Lenihan. Given the sheer volumes of public money already given to the bank, and the volumes of public money due to be given, it is outrageous that the public has no recourse to information as to how this money is being spent. We cannot quantify expenditure by the bank, nor has the Government made any effort to inform the public about how much public money has been given to the banks, and how it is exactly spent.

I gave a great deal of thought to this problem over the last number of months, and decided on a course of action that will be unknown to many. I have decided to publicise this process in the hope that others will follow. We have a right to know what is going on. As a result I started a process that I believe is the most significant and important request for information we have sent to date.

Continue reading “Anglo Irish Bank – A request for information”

FOI log – Department of the Taoiseach

As part of an ongoing process, I will be requesting and publishing the requests logs of every public body over the coming months. I have already published the logs of the Department of Health over two years. From now on I shall be requesting the logs of every body going back as far as records allow.

This is the log of the Department of the Taoiseach from January 1, 2006 to December 31, 2009. It includes some of my own requests. Unfortunately the log is short on detail, such as type of requestor. Any extra details I get will be added to existing sheets.



The Department stated that any redactions are exemptions under Section 28 (Personal information)

Bank lending

Paul Krugman, writing in today’s New York Times, has a close look at the property and credit bubble in the US state of Georgia. The similarities to Ireland are telling:

So what’s the matter with Georgia? As I said, banks went wild, in a scene strongly reminiscent of the savings-and-loan excesses of the 1980s. High-flying bank executives aggressively expanded lending — and paid themselves lavishly — while relying heavily on “hot money” raised from outside investors rather than on their own depositors.

It was fun while it lasted. Then the music stopped.

Why didn’t the same thing happen in Texas? The most likely answer, surprisingly, is that Texas had strong consumer-protection regulation. In particular, Texas law made it difficult for homeowners to treat their homes as piggybanks, extracting cash by increasing the size of their mortgages. Georgia lacked any similar protections (and the Bush administration blocked the state’s efforts to restrict subprime lending directly). And Georgia suffered from the difference.

As we blogged last year: Morgan Kelly’s analysis demonstrates how it was excessive bank lending that caused the problems. Our banks went wild. Our bank executives paid themselves lavishly. And now the State is picking up the tab. What consumer protections did we have? What regulation did we have?

Blaming the people for the mess is not good enough. In fact, it’s a lazy analysis Sarah:

People are entitled to shelter, but are they really entitled to buy a house if they can’t afford it? I doubt you’d find many people then, and I’m not sure you’d even find them now, who’d be willing to acknowledge that owning your own home is not a civil right, but the result of careful planning, saving and budgeting. Some observe that there was no real choice, because all party manifestos in 2002 and 2007 competed to outspend each other. That is the case, but it exposes precisely the insistence of the people to have their votes bought rather than won. It also ignores the character issue.

And if there were consumer protections and proper regulation, the banks would never have been allowed to lend the way they did, and the credit bubble would not have snowballed into a property bubble resulting in an economic depression. Tell me again why the Regulator allowed the banks to lend to people at 8 to 10 times their annual salary, or why fraudulent statements of income were widespread?

Quinn grants

The Irish Times this morning:

Speaking this morning, Enterprise Ireland chief executive Frank Ryan said he met senior management and Mr Quinn on Easter Sunday in Dublin and that all key parties are “fully engaged in an effort to resolve this matter as quickly as possible”.

Mr Ryan said he could not reveal what was discussed during the meeting and that it was too early to say whether Quinn Insurance should stay with the group or be sold.

Speaking on Morning Ireland , he said the key thing for employees now was to concentrate on doing business and focus on the causes of the situation. “There’s been a lot of discussion in relation to the decision of the High Court and the administrator etc – that’s really a consequence not a cause. I can confirm the causes are being focused on now.”

Speaking on same programme, Teresa Lynch, an Quinn Group employee, said the regulator had a job to do but that workers were seeking a compromise that will save their jobs.

“As far as I’m aware, the Quinn Group is making money, as is Quinn Direct, so I don’t see where that problem is. . . . what we’re saying is let the regulator work with us, let him talk to us, allow us that opportunity,” she said.

Enterprise Ireland granted Quinn Packaging €600,000 in 2007 and Quinn Insurance €307,705.29 in 2007. It granted €391,842.01 to Quinn Insurance in 2008 and €419,766.08 to Quinn Therm in the same year, or a total of €1.719m over two years.

Cabinet Agendas 1998/1999 complete

Some Bank Holiday scanning. I have uploaded all available Cabinet Agendas for 1998 and 1999. They are available at the following links:

Agendas April May 1998
Agendas June July 1998
Agendas August September October 1998
Agendas November December 1998
Agendas January February March 1999
Agendas April May June 1999
Agendas July August September 1999
Agendas October November December 1999