NAMA: The developers, the banks and the fallout
Ireland's National Assets Management Agency (NAMA) is closing after 15 years of managing bad property loans following the 2008 financial crisis. The agency was created to stabilize the banking sector, though it faced significant public criticism regarding taxpayer risk and the handling of bank losses.
Why it matters
NAMA's closure marks the end of a major chapter in Irish economic history, highlighting the long-term consequences of the 2008 financial collapse.
This weekend Ireland's bad bank closes its doors for the final time.
Amid huge controversy and public protests, National Assets Management Agency, or NAMA, was born in late 2009 at the height of the financial collapse.
The agency was set up to help solve the financial nightmare engulfing Ireland with its banks on the verge of collapse - smothered under enormous loans given to developers who were unable to repay.
Nobody was able to accurately predict the bank losses which had been guaranteed by the State and therefore the taxpayer in 2008.
The answer was to set up an institution which would take over the banks' bad loans.
The taxpayer would have to underwrite the new organisation's purchase of the property loans.
The Government at the time was a coalition of Fianna Fáil and the Green Party led by then Taoiseach Brian Cowen.
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