Eine Werbetafel, die die National Asset Management Agency (Nama) mit dem Computerspiel Grand Theft Auto vergleicht, an der Seite eines Gebäudes in Dublin im November 2009.

As it turned out it returned about €5bn to the exchequer and worked to stabilise the market.

Spain and Germany also instituted a “bad bank” and neither ended up being profitable. In fact Spain’s lost about €10bn and wasn’t nearly as stabilising as NAMA.

Ultimately NAMA as a policy worked. Our economy recovered and we’re one of the world’s richest countries with amongst the best quality of life and HDI scores.

It’ll be amusing to see how many people are angry about that.

One of NAMAs roles was stabilising bad portfolios and selling them to the highest competent bidder. Those bidders were servicing companies with funding from Wall Street and London city funds and they prices started at 50c in the euro in 2013 and then up into the 60c and 70c from there. Don’t forget that property halved in value and the majority of each NAMA book was in negative equity. The arrears were huge- 80% delinquent accounts was normal.

It means that investors (or vulture funds) would only buy at a steep discount and often times they paid above the actual real estate value of the underlying properties.

The banks weren’t able to deal with all of their loans, the vulture funds were a necessity. Anyone who didn’t pay their mortgage got about 4 years of relief as well.

If it happened again I am sure certain things would be done differently but it certainly wasn’t the worst outcome.