Wallace says Nama ‘cherry picks’ and gives favourable treatment

The National Asset Management Agency (Nama) has given favourable treatment to some developers and "cherry picked" its best properties to be sold to American "vulture funds", Independent TD Mick Wallace has claimed.

Mr Wallace also said Nama failed to put many of the assets under its control onto the open market and sold in closed arrangements.

The Wexford deputy also alleged a "cartel" of big property owners had driven up rental costs in Dublin.

He said the price of a month’s rent in a two-bedroom apartment on the city’s northside rising from €1,000 to €1,400 in two and half years.

"A small group of players now control a large chunk of the rental market in Dublin," Mr Wallace said on RTÉ radio.

He also said Nama likes to sell properties in big blocks “that only investment funds, vulture funds, mostly from America, have the money to be buying”.

Smaller lots

“Irish people could only buy them in smaller lots,” he said, also claiming the agency is biased in how it operates.

“The element of bias is very strong. I was only speaking to someone yesterday from a local authority, someone working in a local authority, trying to gain units out of Nama. What Nama do is they give them to a real estate body.

“We’re being told that most of this is going to open market but in actual fact the real estate people, a lot of the time, are not even advertising them.”

Mr Wallace, who was never in Nama, also alleged some developers were getting preferential treatment, with “one particular player” doing very well.

In response, Nama said: “ Nama is required under the Nama Act to achieve the best possible return for Irish taxpayers from the sale of loans and the sale by Nama debtors and receivers of properties securing those loans. Nama achieves this by openly marketing sales and allowing all interested parties to bid on the same basis.”