Opinion

Nama: No-one deserves £5m to carry out a single job

Belfast businessman Frank Cushnahan was a Northern Ireland adviser to Nama from May 2010 until November 2013
Belfast businessman Frank Cushnahan was a Northern Ireland adviser to Nama from May 2010 until November 2013 Belfast businessman Frank Cushnahan was a Northern Ireland adviser to Nama from May 2010 until November 2013

THE Nama loan book sale is a tale of greed and unethical practices by those once deemed pillars of society.

Thanks to a whistleblower developer, the excellent BBC Spotlight programme this week was able to verify and stand up the information my colleagues in this paper exposed last year.

It should be remembered that during the time when The Irish News was leading on this story our then first minister Peter Robinson called this paper `a ragsheet' for daring to investigate allegations of financial wrongdoing.

But then the multiple conflicts of interest displayed by some of the people involved in the Project Eagle sale would point to individuals who had become accustomed to bending the rules without fear of repercussions.

The disdain with which they treated this paper for daring to do what others feared and question their actions, showed people who felt themselves to be above public scrutiny.

The Nama loan book was the biggest property deal in Northern Ireland's history, only made possible because of a property crisis caused by the same greedy speculating that was demonstrated by certain individuals during the sell off of billions of bad debt.

The loans defaulted on in recession amounted to over £4 billion, and more shockingly that was money borrowed by just 55 developers and the majority of that by just a handful of people.

When the entire property portfolio was sold at a knockdown £1 billion to an American company it was at a massive loss to the Republic's tax payers who suffered savage austerity and cuts to public services so their government could bail out the banks who handed out billions in loans to the elite during the Celtic Tiger years.

The businessman and former banker, Frank Cushnahan, who was not only playing in both teams but was the referee as well, was a close friend of Peter Robinson.

The man who had access to the first minister had been appointed to the Nama advisory committee on the recommendation of the DUP.

Mr Cushnahan had always denied that he was due to receive money from the Cerberus deal until caught in a covert recording by the BBC boasting that he was in line for a payout from the 2014 fire sale.

Details were previously revealed by whistleblowers such as TD Mick Wallace, loyalist Jamie Bryson and now developer John Miskelly.

A previous deal with another American company collapsed when it was discovered Cushnahan was to be paid £5m if it went ahead.

Just think about that the next time you check your overdraft to see if you can afford to fill your oil tank, or your child needs new school shoes a week before pay day.

A man whose main skill and talent appears to be his ability to access those with political influence was to get paid £5 million for one job.

I can't think of a single person on this planet who deserves paid £5 million for one job, least of all someone whose job is was to facilitate the sale of bad debt accrued by developers who helped bankrupt an entire country at the expense of the citizens of that country.

To put a human face on the Irish banking and property crisis and the misery it caused hardworking families consider Stephanie Meehan. Her partner Fiachra Daly took his own life under pressure from the bank over mounting mortgage debt on the doomed Priory Hall development.

Flats built by a property developer formerly from Northern Ireland, Tom McFeely, that were uninhabitable firetraps. McFeely and his cohorts who were raking it in during the boom, exploited people like Stephanie Meehan's family by building apartments you wouldn't house your pets in, selling them for hundreds of thousands of euro.

Ms Meehan's bank, KBC, continued to pursue her for interest arrears weeks after Fiachra's death, until media attention on her case forced them to back down.

While the working class were being hounded, in some cases literally to death, for a few thousand in arrears the super rich were plotting how to get even richer on the back of the financial mess they'd helped create.

And even more shameful are politicians who dined with them and helped facilitate a deal that cost the Republic's tax payer billions.

It was a case of shoot the messenger and blame the press, which is basically standard protocol in these parts regardless of what political party is under the spotlight.