McNamara Construction [In Receivership]

cson

http://www.rte.ie/news/2010/1112/mcnamara.html

Another one of Ireland's Marquee Construction Companies fails.

Not long after this one;

http://www.rte.ie/news/2010/1104/pierse-business.html

The Construction deck of cards is collapsing pretty thoroughly and as ever you can bet hundreds of subcontractors will go to wall as a knock on effect of the above.

Ordinary man

The bigshots who made the big money will walk away with their big houses and assets and let the subcontractors carry the losses. Many men who worked their arses off for the last 10 years will lose everything and still owe money. Is there no such thing in this country to prevent or punish wreckless trading. As with the banking sector, jail terms are needed!

dan_d

Why are people surprised by this? The writing has been on the wall for these guys for at least 18 months now.

I'd say there's more to come aswell. I agree with Ordinary man - but more than jail terms, they need to stripped of all assets aswell.

mikemac

Ordinary man wrote: »

Is there no such thing in this country to prevent or punish wreckless trading.

Senator Fergal Quinn has introduced a bill to give more protection to sub contractors.
Should be ready in the next few months, it's making progress

Too late for these people though

McNamara Construction started in the 1940's and developed into a huge company over decades. A success story. And it's all gone now

michael999999

all there site managers and foremen were sent to a job in nigeria over the last few months.this company have been burning subbies for years.there rates were crap,it was impossible to make profit.the job i worked on in mary i,any deliveries of materials or plant hire had to be payed for before they were dropped on site.

there site managers now there is a laugh,they were literally in fear of the directors doing there weekly site inspections.they were like lemmings running around after him.none of them would take any responsibility for delays even though they were there fault.

this was in the pipeline for a long time.

Slideshowbob

nama was set up for bad property loans

mcnamara construction is a construction company

so how come nama could put mcnamara construction into receivership?

Chief QS

Ordinary man wrote: »

The bigshots who made the big money will walk away with their big houses and assets and let the subcontractors carry the losses. Many men who worked their arses off for the last 10 years will lose everything and still owe money. Is there no such thing in this country to prevent or punish wreckless trading. As with the banking sector, jail terms are needed!

Ordinary man, you are talking nonsense, I can tell you, that all subcontractors were paid in accordance with the contract they signed up to. Bernard McNamara, is a very decent man, that provided alot of employment to alot of people down the years. I dont share you views whatsoever, it is very unfortunate that Bernard McNamara has found himself in the circumstances that he has. He is an outstanding man and I can tell you it was sub-contractors and many others that were living off him than the other way around, total nonsense you are talking. He is very decent man.

RealityCheck

Chief QS wrote: »

Ordinary man, you are talking nonsense, I can tell you, that all subcontractors were paid in accordance with the contract they signed up to. Bernard McNamara, is a very decent man, that provided alot of employment to alot of people down the years. I dont share you views whatsoever, it is very unfortunate that Bernard McNamara has found himself in the circumstances that he has. He is an outstanding man and I can tell you it was sub-contractors and many others that were living off him than the other way around, total nonsense you are talking. He is very decent man.

I take it you worked as a quantity surveyor for him?

PomBear

they were doing big works in NUIG, my college, now two huge building sites left bang smack in the middle of our campus

michael999999

Chief QS wrote: »

Ordinary man, you are talking nonsense, I can tell you, that all subcontractors were paid in accordance with the contract they signed up to. Bernard McNamara, is a very decent man, that provided alot of employment to alot of people down the years. I dont share you views whatsoever, it is very unfortunate that Bernard McNamara has found himself in the circumstances that he has. He is an outstanding man and I can tell you it was sub-contractors and many others that were living off him than the other way around, total nonsense you are talking. He is very decent man.

so are you working in nigeria for them,or maybe qatar?

are mc namara not nicknamed the subbie breakers?

Scofflaw

This is going increasingly towards territory where someone says something libellous, and the whole thread gets pulled. Try to avoid that, and try to avoid getting personal - in the latter case, the OP will wind up in "In the News", and the personal stuff will go to the shredder.

moderately,
Scofflaw

Chief QS

michael999999 wrote: »

so are you working in nigeria for them,or maybe qatar?

are mc namara not nicknamed the subbie breakers?

no i am not working for them in qatar or nigeria.

i just wanted to even up the criticism to mcnamara, as for you implying that they are subbie breakers, possibly payment on client and contractor side was a weak point. which is why fergal quinn's bill on introducing a quick way to resolve payment issues is a good thing for the irish construction industry, particularly where we are at, at the moment.

Slideshowbob

Does anyone know if there is any connection:

http://www.mcnamaraltd.co.uk/

Currently advertising jobs on jobs.ie

rumour

Chief QS wrote: »

Ordinary man, you are talking nonsense, I can tell you, that all subcontractors were paid in accordance with the contract they signed up to. Bernard McNamara, is a very decent man, that provided alot of employment to alot of people down the years. I dont share you views whatsoever, it is very unfortunate that Bernard McNamara has found himself in the circumstances that he has. He is an outstanding man and I can tell you it was sub-contractors and many others that were living off him than the other way around, total nonsense you are talking. He is very decent man.

While he may be a decent man, outstanding well thats a matter of judgement, he ought to have stuck to being a builder IMHO. His fate was sealed once he was lured into the development business by the bankers. This has happened to many architects already (the most prominent names in Irish Architecture) who got lured by the vast profit potential. Building companies that followed this model will inevitably go under also, unless they can secure some income abroad and fast.
While it may be unfortunate for Messrs McNamara if he owes sub-contractors my guess is they will feel the pain harder than he does.

jmayo

Ordinary man wrote: »

The bigshots who made the big money will walk away with their big houses and assets and let the subcontractors carry the losses. Many men who worked their arses off for the last 10 years will lose everything and still owe money. Is there no such thing in this country to prevent or punish wreckless trading. As with the banking sector, jail terms are needed!

Well maybe in the next eleciton the builders aned subbies might not vote for the party bankrolled by the likes of the bigshots who made the big money and walk away with their big houses and assets.

Chief QS wrote: »

Ordinary man, you are talking nonsense, I can tell you, that all subcontractors were paid in accordance with the contract they signed up to. Bernard McNamara, is a very decent man, that provided alot of employment to alot of people down the years. I dont share you views whatsoever, it is very unfortunate that Bernard McNamara has found himself in the circumstances that he has. He is an outstanding man and I can tell you it was sub-contractors and many others that were living off him than the other way around, total nonsense you are talking. He is very decent man.

bertie are you posting on here now from your cupboard ?

It is also very unfortunate that the Irish taxpayers like me (don't know if you are one or not) have found ourselves in the circumstances where we have been left with upto a billion in debts run up by this so called very decent man in his failed ventures like the Burlington, the Irish Glass bottle plant in Ringsend, etc.
Oh and if he was so decent why did he pull the plug on the Dublin city centre regeneration project ?
Oh yeah he was not going to make enough money out of it. :rolleyes:

I thought this kind of sycophancy went out when the landlord class were removed from Ireland ?
Obviously I was wrong. :rolleyes:

rumour wrote: »

While he may be a decent man, outstanding well thats a matter of judgement, he ought to have stuck to being a builder IMHO. His fate was sealed once he was lured into the development business by the bankers. This has happened to many architects already (the most prominent names in Irish Architecture) who got lured by the vast profit potential. Building companies that followed this model will inevitably go under also, unless they can secure some income abroad and fast.
While it may be unfortunate for Messrs McNamara if he owes sub-contractors my guess is they will feel the pain harder than he does.

Ah please less of the innocent sh**e.
These guys were no effing innocents who were lured into all their follies by the evil bankers.

Remember he was a big player in the Irish glass bottle plant along with his two Anglo banking buddies.

I love the way some are already starting the revisionsim where scapegoats are been set up so that all the major players are been given excuses for their gigantic fu** ups that they walk away, but leave us with the enormous bills.

Cavehill Red

Chief QS wrote: »

He is very decent man.

Such a decent man he pulled out of redeveloping working class housing estates in Dublin's inner city and tried to demand an even huger fee to do the job, even as the market was already in freefall?

Sounds like Mother Theresa, alright.

rumour

jmayo wrote: »

Ah please less of the innocent sh**e.
These guys were no effing innocents who were lured into all their follies by the evil bankers.

Remember he was a big player in the Irish glass bottle plant along with his two Anglo banking buddies.

I love the way some are already starting the revisionsim where scapegoats are been set up so that all the major players are been given excuses for their gigantic fu** ups that they walk away, but leave us with the enormous bills.

Point taken....No intention to be revisionist and I have no sympathy for him infact I'm ambivalent to his fate. The sooner the corrupt developer class are consigned to history the better. I don't want tribunals andpromises of new beginnings (remember the tribunals???) I just want them gone.

Having said that, when easy money was provided everyone lost the run of themselves.

jimmycrackcorm

rumour wrote: »

The sooner the corrupt developer class are consigned to history the better.

I didn't realize that there was a developer class -I didn't think there were enough of them to constitute a class....

jmayo

rumour wrote: »

Point taken....No intention to be revisionist and I have no sympathy for him infact I'm ambivalent to his fate. The sooner the corrupt developer class are consigned to history the better. I don't want tribunals andpromises of new beginnings (remember the tribunals???) I just want them gone.

Agree I want them gone, but they can damm well leave all their assets and money to pay for the sh**e they left us.

rumour wrote: »

Having said that, when easy money was provided everyone lost the run of themselves.

Correction everyone did not lose the run of themselves.
A fair few did, but some of us didn't and thus I find that term extremly insulting.

jimmycrackcorm wrote: »

I didn't realize that there was a developer class -I didn't think there were enough of them to constitute a class....

It wsn't a develoepr class, it was developer tent.

Inverse to the power of one!

Ahem....Put's on his Devil's advocate hat.

Let's just put this in a strange form of perspective....given that most in this thread have a dislike of Developers, then it will fit that my analogy places them in the form of bacteria.

Just as with bacteria, they grow and multiply to the point of destroying their habitat as long as there is a food source available....biological sciences describe this in terms of exponential growth.....and more importantly limiting factors where upon what would go on indefinitely is curtailed by a resource running low or becoming unavailable or external changes to the environment.

In terms of the developers, what else would you expect them to do? Not grow their business? At the end of the day, as long as capital was available and the bubble was expanding, it was only natural from the perspective of their business to grow as much as possible. No more then a scientist placing agar in a petri dish, the bankers were feeding the developers and they in turn behaved no better then what then what market theory expects.

Now I'm saying this outside of the context of corruption and cronyism, which indeed it is fair to say a some of the big developers were up to their necks in. But it's also fair to say that a large percentage of developers were also people who had worked in construction all their lives, saw the opportunity and went for it, no different in how the rest of us react to opportunity.

At the end of the day, there may well have been a lot of pressure from developers for the government to bend things their way, but it was governments choice to turn property in to a gravy train, ignore regulation and stand aside as the banks ran riot with endless credit unleashing the tsunami of debt the country now carry's the burden of.

Developers and the construction industry do have their share in the catastrophe, but they were behaving as would be expected in a cynical sense, the Financial industry and the government on the other hand were acting in blatant and criminal negligence.

SkepticOne

Inverse to the power of one! wrote: »

In terms of the developers, what else would you expect them to do? Not grow their business? At the end of the day, as long as capital was available and the bubble was expanding, it was only natural from the perspective of their business to grow as much as possible. No more then a scientist placing agar in a petri dish, the bankers were feeding the developers and they in turn behaved no better then what then what market theory expects.

But this is holding them to a very low standard, imo. It is true given what we know about them, that it would have been unrealistic to expect otherwise, but we have to acknowledge that they failed as business people. They failed to understand the market in which they were operating. Maybe not the majority but lot of businesses fail this way; they get into debt in anticipation of demand that does not materialise and they go under.

What you are saying is a bit like saying that an general can only ever be expected to advance even when it makes more sense to strategically withdraw.

I know you are playing the Devils advocate here but I think you are holding developers to a standard much lower than would normally be the case for businesses in general.

I do agree that they were behaving as would be expected in a cynical sense: trade as if the boom will go on for ever and that it is only a temporary blib in demand. Then, if the boom returns - profit! and if it doesn't well, it is the banks, the subcontractors, the state, in other words everyone else, that carries the can. I'm not sure whether they could have anticipated NAMA and 200,000 salaries, but I'm sure they anticipated some sort of payback from the government as well in return for their generosity to Fianna Fail over the years.

rumour

jimmycrackcorm wrote: »

I didn't realize that there was a developer class -I didn't think there were enough of them to constitute a class....

Your right...I should edit that but it would distort the following comments. The havoc they have left behind is astonishingly disproportionate to the number of individuals.

My thinking was that they were not entirely dissimmilar to the aristocracy class in Ireland circa 1830-1900, we had no problem assigning a class to them.

rumour

jmayo wrote: »

Correction everyone did not lose the run of themselves.
A fair few did, but some of us didn't and thus I find that term extremly insulting.

This is my second correction this morning your right 'everyone' is a bit of an overstatement. The helicopter view of Irelands current state of affairs usually asssigns this 'tab' to everyone in Ireland. Of course its not always true, just like not all Germans were nazi.

danbohan

rumour wrote: »

Your right...I should edit that but it would distort the following comments. The havoc they have left behind is astonishingly disproportionate to the number of individuals.

My thinking was that they were not entirely dissimmilar to the aristocracy class in Ireland circa 1830-1900, we had no problem assigning a class to them.

people living under aristocracy class in ireland 1830-1900 had very few choices . the developer class only existed because of the choices made by people who now want blame everybody but themselves for the mess they are in

rumour

danbohan wrote: »

people living under aristocracy class in ireland 1830-1900 had very few choices .

Emm.....I didn't know a class was defined by the choices those outside that clas could or could not make, my point was that such a small group of people who could so disproportionately affect the welfare of the entire nation are usually asigned a 'tag' of some description. (Whether I agree with this or not is somewhat irrelevant its a common media technique which I certianly don't feel influential enough to change.) We assigned a class 'tag' to the aristocracy of the nineteenth century, they too were disproportionately influential on an entire nation.

danbohan wrote: »

the developer class only existed because of the choices made by people who now want blame everybody but themselves for the mess they are in

I agree on one level and on another I disagree. In some respects this is a chicken an egg situation. The people who now want to blame everybody, where did they get the money?? Who decided that they should hand over the money?
I can remember distinctly a conversation with an architect colleague (I say colleague as things are a bit frosty now)years ago, who was invited to participate in a developement. He was enticed by a huge bonus, what he didn't consider was that the developer was managing development risk. Assign a lump sum(out of future profits) to the architect to assume all planning risk and promise him a share of the profit. The architect not familiar with risk management didn't appreciate this transfer and thought oh planning I'll sort that out easy then there was the temptation of €€€€€€€€€€€.

He didn't appreciate my advice that your getting into bed with sharks, be careful, this is not your core business. During the good years he was having it all, fancy house designed by himself of course, the massive car, new suits, fact finding trips to any building you could think of, then the kids came, a nanny no less, then the expensive montessori etc etc etc.. Anyway now he's broke and moaning how developer's were all nasty people.

Did the developer exist because of this architect or vice versa. I don't really have a satisfactory answer. For now I'll just follow the money...

Caveat emptor.

thebman

Inverse to the power of one! wrote: »

Now I'm saying this outside of the context of corruption and cronyism, which indeed it is fair to say a some of the big developers were up to their necks in. But it's also fair to say that a large percentage of developers were also people who had worked in construction all their lives, saw the opportunity and went for it, no different in how the rest of us react to opportunity.
.

There in lies the problem though. These big property developers had annual visits to the Galway tent to donate to the FF party (i.e. the government) to lobby and essentially bribe them into behaving favorably toward the construction industry.

Victims of their own success in this regard, they got the government acting so recklessly in their interest that it collapsed the country and financial system with it.

The small developers may not have been in on the political donation scam but the higher ones were and the smaller ones were happy to have the left overs.

To coin the system, those were the developers that saw an already over flooded market and said me too! And they were hoping to make millions doing this and failed and now we should feel sorry for them because their gamble backfired on them.

I don't really, much like I don't really feel sorry for someone that bets the family home on whether Liverpool win the premiership. You should only bet what you can afford to lose and these people behaved recklessly and are paying the price for that mistake.

Many Irish people really need to take some basic match refresher courses TBH.

Chief QS

Cavehill Red wrote: »

Such a decent man he pulled out of redeveloping working class housing estates in Dublin's inner city and tried to demand an even huger fee to do the job, even as the market was already in freefall?

Sounds like Mother Theresa, alright.

Cavehill Red, I think the reason for pulling out of the City Centre projects was due to council moving the goal posts. I do not think Mcnamara can be accused for wanting to make a decent profit on a job, he could hardly be expected to build for a loss, that is lunacy. No, the fact is this, McNamara would have gladly built those projects if the council had given him a fair opportunity to make a profit or at least break even!

The reality was that those projects would have been built by McNamara if the council was willing to enter into a fair bargain.

Blame the council, not McNamara.

Chief QS

rumour wrote: »

While he may be a decent man, outstanding well thats a matter of judgement, he ought to have stuck to being a builder IMHO. His fate was sealed once he was lured into the development business by the bankers. This has happened to many architects already (the most prominent names in Irish Architecture) who got lured by the vast profit potential. Building companies that followed this model will inevitably go under also, unless they can secure some income abroad and fast.
While it may be unfortunate for Messrs McNamara if he owes sub-contractors my guess is they will feel the pain harder than he does.

True rumour, McNamara would still be the leading company today if they had stuck to Building. But, temptation is terrible thing and I think most of us can confess to being succumbed to it. The root of all our misery including McNamara are the Bankers. McNamara is a debtor and someone somewhere is getting high on it.The Bankers and not individuals have caused us this misery.

I think possibly McNamara should have heeded his Father's advice when he said:

"Most Builders go bust because they think they own the cash flow, when in fact they don't!"

hiorta

Was the owner of this company one of those who were 'awarded' papal medals for - ahem - generosity to the Vatican?

jmayo

Chief QS wrote: »

True rumour, McNamara would still be the leading company today if they had stuck to Building. But, temptation is terrible thing and I think most of us can confess to being succumbed to it. The root of all our misery including McNamara are the Bankers. McNamara is a debtor and someone somewhere is getting high on it.The Bankers and not individuals have caused us this misery.

I think possibly McNamara should have heeded his Father's advice when he said:

"Most Builders go bust because they think they own the cash flow, when in fact they don't!"

It is getting nauseating at this stage. :rolleyes:

Now to paraphrase your post ...

Saint bernard was tempted by the evil bankers into buying the Burlington, investing in the Irish glass bottle site which also dragged the Irish taxpayers in (long before NAMA) because another entity in that deal was the DDDA qaungoe.


The bankers did not exist in isolation, they were aided by the developers who glady took the money, and then made massive profits after they royally screwed the end purchasers.

mcnamara was a very prominent ffer, he had been an ff councillor and had run for election as a ff TD.
He was in bed at a very high level with a regime that was part of a trinity of powers (the politicans particularly of ff, the bankers and the developers) all to further their own wealth.


So please stop the shi** lauding someone who made wreckless decisions because of pure greed and has now left the fallout on the rest of us who did not benefit in the wealth they had created previously.


You claim it was not individuals who caused this, but some group called the bankers. :rolleyes:
What utter tripe. :mad:
Who ran the banks but individual bankers, who borrowed collosal sums often not with proper security but individual developers, who regulated the banks but individuals, who made high political decisions furthering the bubble but individuals.

Your statement stinks of the same quasi speak used by the HSE everytime someone f**ks up causing another life to end unnecessarily.
It is the system, it is some mythical entity, it is never any individuals fault.

Bullsh**.

Inverse to the power of one!

SkepticOne wrote: »

But this is holding them to a very low standard, imo. It is true given what we know about them, that it would have been unrealistic to expect otherwise, but we have to acknowledge that they failed as business people. They failed to understand the market in which they were operating. Maybe not the majority but lot of businesses fail this way; they get into debt in anticipation of demand that does not materialise and they go under.

Fair point, but it's also worth noting that their behavior was no different to that of other bubbles of history. In fact were it so easy to counter such behavior then bubbles wouldn't exist.

SkepticOne wrote: »

What you are saying is a bit like saying that an general can only ever be expected to advance even when it makes more sense to strategically withdraw.

The general's an individual, we are considering the actions of a group.

SkepticOne wrote: »

I know you are playing the Devils advocate here but I think you are holding developers to a standard much lower than would normally be the case for businesses in general.

I do agree that they were behaving as would be expected in a cynical sense: trade as if the boom will go on for ever and that it is only a temporary blib in demand. Then, if the boom returns - profit! and if it doesn't well, it is the banks, the subcontractors, the state, in other words everyone else, that carries the can. I'm not sure whether they could have anticipated NAMA and 200,000 salaries, but I'm sure they anticipated some sort of payback from the government as well in return for their generosity to Fianna Fail over the years.

This is the interesting part in wondering who expected who to carry the can, the problem is that as in a bubble, the prospect of failure was ignored and there was no expectation for anyone to carry the can as it was expected there would be an unending line of credit. Wasn't it the banks who created this situation?

thebman wrote:

Victims of their own success in this regard, they got the government acting so recklessly in their interest that it collapsed the country and financial system with it.

This is why I'm doning the devils advocate hat in this thread, can't it just as easily be said that the Govt choose to act recklessly on it's own behest out of greed for taxes that the construction and property sectors were generating?
Wasn't it the banks that destroyed the financial system with criminally negligent behavior?

There's a bit of a chicken and egg going on here, and I genuinely am interested in what the levels of accountability are. I do acknowledge that the construction sector did play it's part in this catastrophe, but it seems more to me that the banks and the govt had the greater power and part in feeding the bubble. The developers were merely the bacteria eating all that was available to them.

That said tho.....I strongly, strongly believe that all forms of corruption that can be proven by law should be prosecuted as severely as possible and I have no doubt that there would be a lot of individuals from the construction sector included.

thebman wrote:

To coin the system, those were the developers that saw an already over flooded market and said me too! And they were hoping to make millions doing this and failed and now we should feel sorry for them because their gamble backfired on them.

I don't really, much like I don't really feel sorry for someone that bets the family home on whether Liverpool win the premiership. You should only bet what you can afford to lose and these people behaved recklessly and are paying the price for that mistake.

Many Irish people really need to take some basic match refresher courses TBH.

Agreed, you make the bet, you live with the risk. But in this context what troubles me is that the bookie isn't calling in all the debts equally, the bankers are walking away with their bonuses, the govt are walking away with their pensions, and some developers are also walking away with what ever they can grab....but those who are walking away are more then happy to have their share of the blame apportioned to the likes of McNamara and the stereotype of the "developer" to the determent of accountability.

Would it be fair to prioritize the targets in the order: Govt, Banks, Developers?

I guess I'm kinda saying, don't take the eye of the target