Somers to step down as head of NTMA

MICHAEL SOMERS, the man charged with managing Ireland’s €73.26 billion national debt, is expected to step down as chief executive of the National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA) within the next three weeks.

It is understood Mr Somers indicated to Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan back in April that he wished to retire from the post he has held since the NTMA was established in 1990.

The next meeting of the NTMA’s advisory committee – effectively its board of directors – is to be held on December 3rd and there was a growing feeling last night that Mr Somers will announce his retirement then.

The Department of Finance and the NTMA both declined to comment on Mr Somers’s plans. Mr Somers, who is 67, was due to remain with the NTMA until the end of next year. He is believed to be the country’s best-paid public servant with annual remuneration of about €1 million.

It is understood that Mr Somers will be replaced by John Corrigan, director of the National Pensions Reserve Fund (NPRF), which operates under the auspices of the NTMA.

Mr Corrigan, who is 62, was a chief executive of AIB Investment Managers before joining the NTMA.

He has been a key adviser over the past 12 to 18 months to the Department of Finance and Mr Lenihan in relation to the bank guarantee scheme; the capitalisation of the institutions, which involved funds provided by the NPRF; and the establishment of Nama.

Mr Somers was the NTMA’s first chief executive when it was set up in 1990 by then taoiseach Charlie Haughey to manage the country’s crippling national debt.

This function previously resided with the Department of Finance but the growth in the size and complexity of the debt during the 1980s and the difficulty of hiring and retaining staff led to the NTMA being set up.

A former civil servant, Mr Somers is credited with having brought the national debt under control in the 1990s, although it has doubled in the past two years due to the collapse of the economy and the need to borrow more than €20 billion this year alone to balance the budget.

Mr Somers lives in Donnybrook, Dublin, and has a house in Antibes, in southern France. He is a keen rugby fan. He was described yesterday by associates as being “amiable” and “a man of high intellect”. Mr Somers made the headlines in May when he told an Oireachtas committee that his agency was entering new territory, and it had not been adequately staffed to deal with the challenge of running Nama or even working on the resolution of the banking crisis.

Chairman of the Dáil Public Accounts Committee Bernard Allen said it was a “pity” Mr Somers was retiring as “his expertise and steady hand” would have been useful during the upcoming turbulent economic period ahead.

Fine Gael finance spokesman Richard Bruton said Mr Somers was a “courageous and effective public official” who had saved the taxpayer “substantial money” since 1990.