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A FORMER BANK chief who has raised the possibility of selling-off the National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) in future years has been appointed chair of the organisation’s newly established advisory group.
Michael Geoghegan, the former chief executive of HSBC bank, will chair the NAMA Advisory Group which has been set up by the Minister for Finance Michael Noonan.
Noonan announced in his budget speech on Tuesday that he was setting up the group to advise him on NAMA’s strategy and capacity to deliver on its aim of disposal of property as well as its ongoing management of assets.
NAMA was set up in December 2009 in response to the financial crisis and acquired €75 billion of bad property loans from banks in an attempt to eventually sell them off and recoup some of the money that was put into the banks to prevent their collapse.
It has committed to repaying €7.5 billion of its debt by the end of 2013, €16.5 billion by the end of 2017 and €7 billion by end of 2019.
In a report into NAMA’s future role, carried out by Geoghegan, he has recommended that the organisation manage more loans directly, taking the 600 loans which are currently managed by borrowers from NAMA and instead manage them through the organisation’s own “debt restructuring team”.
“To give effect to this NAMA should recruit an additional 200 staff at a maximum cost of €25m,” the report says. Such a move may prove difficult politically to justify given the the billions of euro already poured into the financial sector by the government.
RTÉ reported yesterday that Geoghegan had also raised the possibility in meetings of selling off the entire agency eventually. It had previously been envisaged that NAMA would only dispose of all the loans on its books that it could.
But in concluding his report, Geoghegan recommends that NAMA must follow a strategic plan to meet the repayment schedule it has set out and warns: “Failure to achieve any of these targets both by amount or time would no doubt create uncertainty and should possibly lead to the assets of NAMA being given to one or more third parties to manage.”
Commenting on the review, Noonan said in a statement today: “I believe that the review is an important milestone for NAMA and will be of significant assistance to the Board as it completes the loan acquisition phase and begins to concentrate fully on the active management of its asset portfolio.”
The Minister said that the matters which have arisen in the “generally positive” report authored by Geoghegan will be discussed in due course.
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It should be a crime to deep fake someone without their consent.
@Jimmy Savage: Agreed, but when it happens to Martin, who in fairness went to the high court, he was derided.
And Google, etc, aren’t doing anything to prevent this, I’ve seen Anne Doyle, The girl from TV3 ,I’ve reported each one, the last one was ” Google couldn’t find the ad that I reported ” eventhough it still appears .
@Jimmy Savage: It is though. The Online Safety Act now makes it a criminal offence to share, or threaten to share, a manufactured or ‘deepfake’ intimate image or video of another person without his or her consent.
@Jimmy Savage: Sure, but over and over we see those social media companies not care a single whit once they make their profits. Any fines are are a rounding error.
I’m fine with labelled satire or parody or some stuff that is actually fun (things like Sassy Justice or ‘if My name is.. was written in 2021′.
There’s so much more that is just not okay at all that propagates on those platforms… faked political or Hollywood starlets…
Then you have the circular activity of bots responding to each other driving up engagement on those platforms, which is profit that they seem value more that any form of ethics.
@Jack Hayes: Explain why it continues then?
@ben wu: Absolutely and they don’t care . They have enabled suicide, self harm , allowed lies to seem acceptable they really are what the world needs to be angry at…..
@Paul O’Mahoney: There was more press coverage over here about something odd looking about a photo of Kate Middleton’s wrist in a family photo, than there has been about those issues…
@ben wu: Was there?
@Jack Hayes: no actually, it is a crime to share or threaten to share an intimate image shared with you. Nothing about manufactured or deepfake
@DerekF: Even if it was as he said then there would be nothing against sharing a non-intimate deepfake where the purpose is to deceive others.
@Paul O’Mahoney: Explain to you why people still do illegal things or how people get away with doing illegal things? You must be new to this world.
It was a paid advert so Facebook must know who paid for it. That person should be prosecuted!
Why is this not happening?
@Steve O’Hara-Smith: Most are ex our Jurisdiction, and are probably not real entities
There is some awful muck on Facebook…. Full Stop.
@james rowan: Still not as bad as all the nazi propaganda on X.
@james rowan: Hence FaceMuck
Very believable, apart from the American twang abd the way she pronounces Turbidy …
Thought it was a genuine SF broadcast. Fits well with their actual,financial policy.
@Alan: Yeah me too
Soon the default belief will be if it’s on the Internet it’s fake, hallucination, or just plain lies and propaganda.
Aka “I gave them all the tools but they could not use them.”
@smatrix mantra: I disagree with that , the Internet was launched for good intentions, and a reasonable return by investing is fine, but the way a minority has essentially monopolised its content is the problem.
All those software engineers, etc, could have equally written code that was of use to the world’s problems, but that didn’t happen .
I’m using it now to share thoughts, most don’t
@Paul O’Mahoney: Every leap in technology can be used as a tool or a weapon, unfortunately most of the time it’s both but weapons seem to have more impact globally.
Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one. Albert Einstein.
That’s plain fake , not exactly deep fake
So sort it you legislators. It might cost a few thousand jobs. But what is the price of political stability?
Dennis O’Brien will take these charlatans to China Town. They are going down now.
Delete your Facebook account and other social media crap.
You will live happier
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