Nama pays out over €3m in redundancy, bonuses and garden leave to staff

Nama has paid out more than €3 million in redundancy, performance bonuses and garden leave over the past 18 months, including a golden handshake of more than €100,000 earlier this year.

A detailed breakdown of payments since the beginning of January 2019 shows 46 staff were given redundancy pay, at a cost of €1.18 million.

Of that, one pay-off was in the range of €100,000-€110,000, while two others cost €90,000-€100,000.

Another former member of staff got redundancy pay of €80,000-€90,000, while three received a settlement of €70,000-€80,000.

The largest number of redundancy payments were in the €30,000-€50,000 range, with 10 people paid up to €40,000 and 11 receiving up to €50,000.

A further €939,000 was paid out in performance-related bonuses to staff, according to the records.

Of that, the vast majority of payments were less than €10,000 with 103 employees of the asset management agency paid an amount in that range.

Fourteen staff at the agency received performance-related pay of €10,000-€20,000, according to records released under the Freedom of Information Act. The average payment was just over €8,000.

Garden leave

A further €891,000 was paid out in “garden leave” to employees who were leaving the agency to go to other jobs.

Garden leave is paid to employees to avoid possible conflicts of interest where a member of staff moves to another job in property or a related industry.

In all, 47 staff were in receipt of such payments over the past 18 months.

Two were paid €40,000-€50,000 each, while three more received €30,000-€40,000.

The majority of payments were €10,000-€30,000, with 16 receiving up to €20,000 and another 15 paid up to €30,000.

Nama said these garden leave payments generally covered a period of one to three months.

Decisions on whether to place staff on garden leave were made on a case-by-case basis, and included consideration of the person’s role and the new employer.

It is understood that many of those placed on garden leave were also entitled to redundancy, though Nama does not provide this level of detail under FOI.