On September 11th, 2001, Frank Daly was woken by an early morning call from his sister-in-law to see if he was alright. He was in Washington DC with his family and blissfully unaware of the terrorist events that were unfolding in the US on that tragic day.

He pulled back the curtain in his hotel room on Dupont Circle to see smoke billowing from the Pentagon, where an aircraft had been deliberately crashed into the building.

Most people would have headed for the nearest bunker or packed up their belongings and sped from the madness. Not Frank.

"We ended up walking down to Capitol Hill and the White House while everyone else was coming against us," he recalls.

“We decided being Irish and being curious we were going to go down and have a look at what was going on. They hadn’t closed it down at that stage.”

It was probably an unconscious act but it tells us something about the man. Daly chose to walk towards the fire. He’s done it at various times in his life.

In the early 1960s, he left behind a cosy career as a teacher to become a customs officer in the civil service, chasing smugglers in various parts of the country.

He rose to the very top of the Revenue Commissioners in a 43-year career that culminated in a series of high-profile investigations into Ansbacher offshore accounts and other tax fiddles that netted the State €1.5 billion.

This involved taking on various high-profile vested interests.

In 2008, he came out of retirement to become a public interest director of Anglo Irish Bank and in December 2009 he took on the unenviable role of chairman of the newly established National Asset Management Agency.

Nama was a creation of the then Fianna Fáil-led government as a vehicle to take €74 billion gross of property loans – some good, most bad – off the balance sheets of five Irish banks so that they could get back to normal lending.

Nama’s role was to work out these loans over a 10-year period and try to recoup the €32 billion it had paid for them.

Daly could have put his feet up and enjoyed his six-figure pension from a distinguished career in the public service. He could have let somebody else eyeball the developers about their massive debts and deal with the slings and arrows from caustic commentators like Shane Ross.

“In short, poor Frank is a worthy guy, honest as the Almighty, clever, efficient – and dull as ditchwater,” Ross opined in an article in July 2010.

Why take on the role?

“I don’t want to sound precious about this but I just felt that Nama, if it worked well, could be very good for this country,” he explains. “And if somebody thought enough of me to ask me to make a contribution then I felt I should do it. I made up my mind within a couple of hours. It wasn’t a long thought-out process.

“ Three and a half years on, do I regret taking it? No. But it’s been tough and much more public than I anticipated.”

Daly rattles off some of the highlights of the past three years as he sees them. By the end of 2012, Nama had generated debtor receipts of €10.6 billion and it is on target to meet the redemption of €7.5 billion in senior bonds by the end of this year.

In other words, it will have paid off one-quarter of the money it raised to buy the loans off the five banks – AIB, Bank of Ireland, Permanent TSB, Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide.

It has also set aside €4 billion to fund capital investment and vendor finance to support the development of a range of assets in its portfolio out to 2016, much of which will be used to help get the Irish economy back on its feet.

About 1,400 individual properties in Ireland have been sold and its debtors and receivers currently have €1.5 billion worth of residential and commercial property on the market.

Contrary to popular opinion, it has granted 222 applications for rent abatement from struggling tenants, foregoing €14 billion in revenue. Just 10 applications have been rejected.

About 4,000 residential properties have also been identified for social housing.

Daly highlights a couple of big-ticket transactions that the agency has completed recently – the sale of its one-third interest in the landmark Citi Tower in London’s Canary Wharf for about £333 million; and the €195 million for its Project Aspen portfolio in Ireland to a joint venture vehicle in which Nama will hold a 20 per cent share.

Bigger challenges
"We kept a stake in this, so there's an upside for Nama and the taxpayer if this goes right, and it will go right," he says. "That's a unique feature and it's an element of joint venture that I suspect Nama will be getting into more."

Daly prides himself on Nama’s transparency but has never officially confirmed the figures from the Citi Tower or Project Aspen deals or the amounts paid by the agency to acquire these loans from the banks.

“Everybody thinks Nama should reveal its hand. I can understand this . . . it is taxpayers’ money we’re dealing with and we are a public entity. But we are a public body that is required to deal commercially for the best return of taxpayers.

“We were very pleased with the outcome for that transaction [Citi tower] and it is a very good return for the taxpayer.”

Much of Nama’s success to date has come from selling loans attaching to property in prime locations in the UK. It was the low-hanging fruit.

Bigger challenges await as it seeks to shift the billions of euro of Irish property. Encouragingly, some commentators believe investors have up to €6 billion to spend on commercial property here.

Daly is not so sure. “We’re well used to people telling us that they have billions and they want to come in and buy this, that and the other from us. The reality is that they want to buy it at a price that would be simply a huge and unforgivable loss to the Irish taxpayer.”

He argues that the Nama portfolio in Ireland is a lot better than many people think and cites its holdings in the Dublin docklands as a prime example.

“Actually, our portfolio is a much better than perhaps even ourselves would have imagined years ago. As recovery comes, and Nama contributes to that recovery, the prospects for our assets will be much, much brighter.

“We have already approved €800 million in investment for Ireland,” he says, adding that €500 million has so far been drawn down.

This includes a €20 million expansion of the Scotch Hall shopping centre in Drogheda, €12 million for the second phase of the Charlestown Shopping Centre in north Dublin and €24 million for two residential apartment blocks in south Dublin.

As if Nama didn't have enough to do, the Government has decided that it should take on any residual loans from the €26 billion loan book that the special liquidators of Irish Bank Resolution Corporation are not able to shift by the end of this year.

Important milestone
Daly calls it Nama II for shorthand. "The fact that we were asked to do it is in some ways a vote of confidence," he says.

Nama has no “visibility” on what assets will transfer over but it’s operating on the “prudent” basis that it might all end up with the agency.

“The clear message is that we will deal with that portfolio when it comes with the same rigour and attention to detail as we have with the original Nama portfolio,” he adds.

The IBRC book includes about €1.8 billion of personal or mortgage loans primarily relating to the old Irish Nationwide. Daly is less enthusiastic about this transferring to Nama.

“It’s not our bag in the sense that it’s personal loans or mortgages with a lifespan of 20 or 30 years, which goes beyond the projected life for Nama, and it has all the attendant complications of the regulatory framework in which mortgages are dealt with these days. That would be new to us.

“That’s if we get it . . . the liquidators might sell it. I’m not going to talk about ideal solutions, but if there were to be a successful sale [of the mortgage book] I’m sure that would be a good outcome.”

Will the transfer of loans from IBRC affect Nama’s proposed 2020 wind-down date?

“Let’s be clear that we will do our damndest to deal with that portfolio by 2020. The single most important milestone for 2020 is that Nama has paid down all of its existing senior debt, and I’m absolutely confident that we’ll do that.”

Daly was born in the seaside village of Abbeyside in Waterford in 1945. His father was a postman while his mother's family were seafarers.

His childhood was framed by activities on the beach and he was active in the scouts. He trained to be a teacher for three months before taking the job with customs, which led to a public service career spanning six decades.

His five-year term with Nama ends in December 2014, by which time he will be 69. He’s non-committal about the possibility of another spin around the track.

What does he hope Nama’s legacy will be when it is eventually wound up?

“I hope it will be seen as an agency that contributed to the recovery of this country in a very tangible way. That it will have repaid all of its senior debt [€30.2 billion] at a minimum.

“I would also have the ambition that it would have repaid its subordinated debt [€1.6 billion]. If I were really ambitious, that we will actually have returned a profit to the Irish people.

“That’s important, but what’s more important is that the investments we make, and we will make investments this year and next, turn out to be good calls and give a good return for Ireland.”