The publication this evening of the Nama business plan indicates that in the nine months since the draft business plan was published, the people in Nama have revised their estimate of Nama making a profit over its life of €4.8bn to a worse case scenario of losses of €0.8bn a turnaround in nine months of over €5bn. Clearly the first Nama draft plan was a fantasy. It is difficult to seriously believe the revised plan except in so far that it means more pain and no gain for Irish taxpayers.

While Nama has transferred big bad assets from banks to the taxpayer, the banks, which have been the recipients of this largess, are still effectively closed for credit. We have a credit famine for SMEs and indigenous Irish businesses who rely on our banks. This alone is continuing to cost tens of thousands of job losses, as small businesses yield to the inevitable and close up shop and other SMEs never get off the starting blocks.

The business plan today confirms again that Fianna Fail in Government remain mesmerised by the banks and the developers and simply cannot turn their gaze or their attention to the real economy, to employment, to job retention and job growth.

Even in the best case scenario where Nama recovers the long term economic value of the assets, plus 10%; the revised profit figure would be €3.9bn and this scenario B would require that asset values have a total up-lift of 21% a highly unlikely scenario.

The business plan makes it clear that Nama is now definitely an asset management company, not a bad bank. We are told that in addition to the €81bn of assets being acquired from the eligible institutions (nine months ago this was an estimate of €77bn) the state is now to acquire derivative transactions with a nominal value of €14bn – a substantial number of these derivatives are non-performing and we are told that Name will pay nil consideration to acquire them. What we don’t know is what cost implications these derivatives taken over will ultimately have for Irish taxpayers.

Almost everything about this draft business plan and report is worse than had been forecast. Far from Nama loans ‘washing their face’ as claimed in the debate by the Minister and his advisor, the tax-payer will be left wiping the egg off their face from this rotten deal which aims to bail out bankers and developers. We were told over and over again that the good assets being transferred into Nama would yield significant returns. Today’s report confirms that only 24% of loans are generating any income that is repayments or interest payments.

It is not clear what the floating rate on the Nama bonds will be. One of the key assumptions used was that this would be at a low level which was always likely to prove to be a fantasy.

Nama is coming in with expected administration costs, etc. which are slightly behind the draft business plan. That is about the only positive in this deeply depressing business plan.