About

‘I have been very privileged to have been a heart of key elements to the recovery of the Irish economy’, Antoine Mac Donncha says. ‘I am enormously proud of the work I have been involved in over the last 5 years in particular. I have not just had a front seat while the state’s history has unfolded, I have been on the stage, albeit in a supporting role’. As the Department of Finance’s pioneering in-house counsel, Mac Donncha joined in 2009, in the aftermath of the worldwide crash, and has since handled several ground-breaking initiatives. These have included establishing asset management agency NAMA, which took over €65bn loans from Irish banks and liquidating the IBRC. He also negotiated the State’s emergency lending with ESM, EFSF and the UK, at the same time Ireland’s program was being negotiated under Troika. ‘Aside from the enervating circumstances the difficulty was negotiating three complex documents with different counterparties’, Mac Donncha explains. ‘We were switching directly from one negotiation to another which was going on in parallel, under extreme time pressure, and with an enormous amount at stake’. Mac Donncha has built a seven-strong team across legal and compliance team over the past six years, carving out a central role for a legal function which did not previously exist. Mac Donncha and his team are also closely involved in the legislation formation. When it comes to working with law firms, Mac Donncha’s experience has been highly positive. ‘Whenever we have called upon them, I have been involved and this has prompted them to be particularly responsive, diligent and creative in respect of these projects’.