About Ireland after NAMA blog
Ireland after NAMA was established after a one day symposium held in NUI Maynooth, on November 23rd, 2009, entitled ‘Geography after NAMA’. The event, attended mostly by geographers from across Ireland, sought on the one hand to discuss how the financial crisis was playing out at local, regional, national and international scales, and on the other to consider how Geography and social sciences more broadly should respond to the crisis in productive ways.
Ireland after NAMA uses the establishment of the National Assets Management Agency as a symbolic, watershed event in the evolution of the crisis. It therefore does not focus on NAMA per se, though it does provide commentary on the debate, policy and workings of that organisation. Rather it provides an informed analysis of the crisis – its history and its present unfolding – drawing on social science theory and empirical research. In particular, it presents a spatial and scalar reading that acknowledges that how the crisis is playing out is spatially uneven and unequal, affecting parts of the country in different ways, and its grounding in particular communities is the result of processes operating at different scales from the local through to the global; how the crisis is playing out in rural Ireland is quite different to the cities, which is quite different to the commuting belts and the border counties for a variety of reasons.
Over time, our hope is that Ireland after NAMA will become a useful resource of analysis and empirical data for those who wish to understand the tail end of the Celtic Tiger and Ireland’s passage through the present crisis.
Ireland after NAMA 
December 2, 2009 at 5:40 pm
The Dubai situation could be heralding the beginning of serious trouble for some EU countries like Ireland.
Competition for capital is increasing and our economic situation is looking less attractive to international financiers by the day.
It’s time for Mr. Cowen and Mr. Lenihan to rethink where they are leading us.
The current situation was flagged by Charlie McCreevy at a talk he gave to the annual dinner of the Institute of Taxation back in February this year.
He said the Government needed to produce a detailed plan of economic policy for the next several years; as such a plan was needed to help maintain international confidence in Ireland.
He said it was also essential that taxes on capital and work remained competitive.
“That will require a detailed and credible plan for reducing our indebtedness by laying out how, over a three- to four-year period, we intend to close the formidable gap between government income and spending,” he said.
He said the capital available for governments to borrow had never been so scarce.
“So it stands to reason that governments that bring forward the best-laid, the most detailed, and most credible plans for getting their budgets back to balance will be the governments that attract the capital at a sensible price; others will pay a hefty premium if, indeed, the capital is available at all.
Prophetic words indeed.
But his advice was not taken and very little has been done in this regard.
All government time and resources have been devoted to the NAMA project and the folly of that strategy is now beginning to unfold.
Gay Huey Evans, Barclay’s vice chairman of investment banking and leading banker for state funds, has said that sovereign wealth funds will be going for agriculture and other natural resource markets rather than financials in 2010 having had their fingers burnt in their investments in Western banks such as Citigroup and UBS during the early phase of the global crisis.
In 2010 they will be allocating a major part of a $94 billion investment programme in that sector.
So far this year agriculture, and energy especially, have drawn 61 per cent of total spend – or around $57 billion, according to Mr. Evans.
In 2008 the natural resources’ share was only eight per cent.
Sovereign funds have $3 trillion to invest.
The reason for this change in strategy is that many of these sovereign funds have come under pressure at home for losing billions of dollars on U.S. and EU banks.
Singapore fund Temasek lost an estimated $4 billion on Barclay’s and Merrill Lynch, while Kuwait lost on its Merrill Lynch and Citigroup bets.
China’s insatiable appetite for natural resources has spurred its sovereign funds to engage in multi-billion dollar deals in countries such as Australia recently. As a result the Western Australian economy, located around Perth, is booming and Clonmel based KENTZ Group recently won a $150 million contract in the region.
All throughout the past year Mr. Cowen you have repeatedly criticised people for being negative, will it ever occur to you that there are sound reasons for this sustained criticism.
You need to change your policies, there is nothing wrong with being wrong, the damage is only done when you don’t learn from your mistakes.
March 16, 2010 at 3:52 pm
Wise words, a (iar-)Uachtaráin, and, currently touting for further investment in the US, an Taoiseach continues to bark up the wrong tree.
June 10, 2010 at 6:43 pm
We are a group of Spanish consultants that we are very interested to compare the crisis impact on Spanish economy and on Andalusia (the most populated and poor region in Spain) economy.
We have a lot data regarding both economies (Spain and Andalusia. We are looking for Irish people interested to interchange similar data from Ireland with us and share what is the best way to go out from this crisis.
Please, Could you send me an email if you are interested to share our crisis evolution and way for solve economic problems.
Thanks, Leo.
August 14, 2010 at 7:48 pm
We have posted a demonsration dashboard of live register data which may be of interest. Check it out at the following link:
http://www.locus.ie/demos/Live%20register%20report%20July%202010/atlas.html
August 16, 2010 at 9:06 am
Hi Tom,
Nice use of Instant Atlas on some of the visualisations. It a very handy tool to use and a good way of allowing multiple users access to data.
Are you part of IT Sligo?
Justin
March 21, 2012 at 4:19 pm
Hi,
I am a journalist from Denmark writing about ghost estates in Ireland. I would like to get in contact with you, what would be the easiest way?
March 22, 2012 at 5:27 pm
Please contact Rob Kitchin at rob.kitchin@nuim.ie or Cian O’Callaghan at cian.ocallaghan@nuim.ie
August 2, 2012 at 11:40 am
Hi,
I am organising a London mapping seminar at UCL in London this coming September. The seminar is exploring the political agency of mapping and maps.Please could you tell me who would be the best person to contact to discuss participation from your side?
April 15, 2014 at 11:26 am
Hi guys, im not sure if any of you are keeping track of what is happening in the construction sector at the minute with the new Building Control laws? Absolutely scandalous. Bregsforum has updates on whats happening. We are full steam ahead for the CIF to have total domination of the construction industry in Ireland! I would welcome an economists view on this. Many thanks. Amanda Gallagher – wife, mother & self builder!
February 3, 2016 at 2:30 pm
Hi! I’m an italian photojournalist. I’m preparing a reportage on the current socio-economic situation of Ireland, how can I contact you? Thanks!