Property developer Michael O’Flynn has denied that the proposed National Assets Management Agency (Nama) is a bailout for the industry.
The managing director of O’Flynn Construction, which recently built the 83 metre high Elysian building in Cork, accepted the industry was partly responsible for the boom and subsequent collapse in the sector and the impact on the banking system.
But while developers were jointly responsible for some mistakes, he did not think it was fair they should take most of the blame for the crisis in the domestic economy.
Mr O’Flynn pointed to zoning decisions “in places where zoning should never have taken place, attracting people out to those locations, they would have been better off if they were never zoned in the first place” as examples of poor planning decisions.
“I am very concerned that some commentators think we can nationalise development. To penalise us out of existence because of recent times is to ignore the contribution our area has made over a large number of years.”
He said that if builders were punished in the way some commentators suggest, there would not be a functioning property market and, without this, Nama will fail.
"If Nama comes in, in such a fashion that it doesn't work for people in our industry, if that motivation for borrowers is taken away . . . you are not going to have a functioning property market," he said on RTÉ's Morning Ireland. "If you are not going to have a functioning property market, you are not going to have a successful Nama."
He also disagreed that Nama was a bailout for developers.
“Whatever we owe before Nama, we owe after Nama. But instead of owing it to three or four banks that we have established relationships for a number of years, we now owe it to one entity, which is a State controlled entity," he said. "I can’t see any plus in our situation there."
He added that the “vacuum” created pending the establishment of Nama had made the situation a lot worse. "So the sooner it happens the better, but it definitely isn’t a bailout.”