If there was a prize for effective communication, the National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) would win the booby prize. Having decided not to go the route of a toxic bank or indeed a good bank/bad bank, the Irish government put all their eggs into this one basket. The purpose was to do as it says on the lid and manage property assets in the national interest. Understandably given the legal complexities involved, NAMA is painfully slow in its operations but its complete inability to communicate its raison d’etre is folly. Countless seminars, books and even new consultancies have been spawned on the back of this, Europe’s biggest property development company.
A key component of the Irish Government strategy was to ensure there would be no collapse or fire sale of key assets which are currently under the control of the country’s leading developers. NAMA was supposed to be a confidence building measure for domestic and international consumption. A flaw in the strategy to date is not the modus operandi but its failure to positively communicate its mission. To all and sundry, the word NAMA and going into NAMA has negative connotations and that’s not just a public perception many business folk with considerable commercial acumen believe that too. Property developers are obviously divided on the issue. One reason is because the Department of Finance in the Republic of Ireland is actually managing NAMA and controlling the banks, leaving the whole process stalemated with banks unwilling and more likely unable to complete on many, if any of the promises it made to developers to their complete schemes.
Some developers are calling foul play over NAMA’s tactics of reeling in both performing and non performing loans. They argue with some justification that they are being penalised for the recklessness of the banks and are now being hung out to dry by the regulations of the Government.
Unfortunately developers are all being tarred by the same brush by a hostile and indeed sometimes antagonistic media.
Indeed much of the media coverage in the Republic has very much been about playing the ‘man’ and not the ‘ball. Recently one Southern developer attempted to show a reporter many of the successful schemes he had developed across Dublin in the past thirty years in an obvious attempt to bolster his track record and credibility as a serious developer and not a cowboy builder.
On reading the finished article it was clear this developer was very much like the frog who accepted the offer of crossing the river on the back of the scorpion. As anyone who knows the story will tell you, despite assuring the frog that it would not sting it, the scorpion does just that. Just as both the frog and the scorpion are about to drown together, the frog asks the scorpion why he did it? To which the scorpion replies ‘why? I am a scorpion, it’s my nature’. So too some Irish journalists seem intent on venting their spleen (in the national interest, of course) on any developer.
It begs the question was this plethora of journalists, who seem to be raking in on our misery with their endless rush to sell us their tacky books about builders, developers and bankers, immune to the personal greed, avarice and self interest that seemingly afflicted the rest of the population?
That banking and financial institutions played fast and loose with our economy, there’s no doubt and that some cowboy developers brought more pokes than pigs (certainly more than they could afford), is also true but Credit Unions and Citizen Advice Bureaus up and down the country will bear testimony to a nation living beyond its means.
Of course, no one wants to hear that now and some journalists like Salome’s mother, want to serve us up a daily dish of the head of very banker, developer and builder they can find.
But let’s be clear some of those bankers and developers committed acts of corporate corruption and they should in course be delivered before the courts and if necessary serve time. Yet the prospect of any successful convictions diminishes every time a journalist on a bad hair day tries to name and shame them. Canny defence lawyers must be keeping weighty media files to prove their clients could never receive a fair trial given the about of media bile occurring on an almost daily basis.
Even Christ knew it was worth separating out the goats from the sheep and both NAMA and the media should start trying too!
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An interesting dialogue is value comment. I feel that it’s best to write more on this subject, it won’t be a taboo topic but typically people are not enough to talk on such topics. To the next. Cheers! I’ll surely come back and look for new stories! Happy Blogging