'Nama has done too much harm to stop it now. Let it finish the job'

He was once one of Ireland’s largest housebuilders but, fearing a bubble, he got out of the game in 2004. In an exclusive interview, Joe Tiernan lays out his blueprint for fixing the property sector

Joe Tiernan: ‘Nama was allowed package up large areas of land . . . only vulture funds were able to compete for them. It should have been sold in smaller tracts’ Picture: Fergal Phillips

It is a warm, sunny day in the back garden of Joe Tiernan’s large home in Castleknock, west Dublin. The Roscommon-born developer was, in the 1990s, one of Ireland’s biggest homebuilders. From Malahide to Killiney, with the occasional foray into Kildare, he built thousands of family homes.

Tiernan won’t say exactly how many, but the estates he is known to have built indicate that the figure is north of 5,000 houses.

Over five ...