This weekend Ireland's bad bank closes its doors for the final time.
Amid huge controversy and public protests, National Assets Management Agency, or NAMA, was born in late 2009 at the height of the financial collapse.
The agency was set up to help solve the financial nightmare engulfing Ireland with its banks on the verge of collapse - smothered under enormous loans given to developers who were unable to repay.
Nobody was able to accurately predict the bank losses which had been guaranteed by the State and therefore the taxpayer in 2008.
The answer was to set up an institution which would take over the banks' bad loans.
But there was a hitch.
The taxpayer would have to underwrite the new organisation's purchase of the property loans.
The Government at the time was a coalition of Fianna Fáil and the Green Party led by then Taoiseach Brian Cowen.
In September 2009, as they pushed a bill through the Dáil to establish NAMA, then Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan told TDs: "The banks should be extremely grateful for the continued support and forbearance extended by the citizens."
Gratitude from bankers was thin on the ground. But the banks were in for a shock.
NAMA bought loans with a face value of over €74 billion for €32 billion - which amounted to a massive discount of 58%.
That left an enormous black hole in the balance sheets of the banks which had to be filled by €40 billion of capital provided by the taxpayer, leading to the State taking control of the banks and ousting most of their senior executives.
By establishing NAMA the State had effectively incurred more borrowings.
That additional burden was heaped on top of a rapidly rising national debt.
The cost of running the country was also soaring as taxes collected from the property market collapsed, unemployment rose and the economy ground to a halt.
Unsurprisingly, there was huge opposition to the prospect of the taxpayer taking on more risk with the creation of NAMA. Many predicted the bad bank would lose a further €10 billion.
In 2009, then Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny, who was leader of the Opposition, said the legislation to establish NAMA "does not have the support of the people. It amounts to an act of economic madness."
The new agency was set up under the umbrella of Ireland's National Treasury Management Agency, the body which handles the national debt.
NAMA was led by a low-key Kerry native Brendan McDonagh. His job was to deal with the property developers who had suddenly become his customers including Liam Carroll, Bernard McNamara and Sean Dunne.
His softly-spoken delivery obscured his steely determination to deal with the tycoons who sometimes laboured under the impression that their crumbling construction empires could be resuscitated.
Many of the big names from the property boom went into personal bankruptcy as their companies collapsed.
As NAMA progressed it became clear two banks, Irish Nationwide and Anglo Irish Bank, were hopelessly insolvent and would have to be liquidated - resulting in a permanent loss to the taxpayer of €34 billion.
Removing the problematic loans from AIB and Bank of Ireland meant they could slowly be rebuilt.
Many observers believed NAMA's job was to get as much money as it could for the property assets it controlled, but its more significant task was to allow the surviving banks to return to the bond market.
To many, this may not have sounded like a priority, but it was vital if the financial system was to be fixed.
Normally banks can fund themselves by borrowing money from the markets, but Ireland's bankers found few would lend to them during the financial crisis.
Instead, they borrowed money from the European Central Bank through what was called emergency liquidity assistance.
In 2010 the ECB found to its horror that Ireland's banks had soaked up €125 billion or about a quarter of the funds set aside for the entire euro zone.
ECB officials in Frankfurt worried, with good reason, about how they would get that money back.
By relieving Bank of Ireland and AIB of their impaired property loans, the pair were slowly able to return to bond markets and repay their borrowings to the ECB.
NAMA began its mammoth task by selling property assets abroad. But there were accusations that it was offloading properties at the bottom of the market.
One notable case was its decision to sell off loans which it co-owned, linked to the iconic Battersea Power Station in London, for €500m in 2012. Some argued it could have achieved a higher price.
NAMA then began disposing of tranches of property loans across Ireland.
There was huge controversy about the circumstances surrounding the sale of its Northern Ireland loan portfolio which is still before the courts.
After 16 years it has worked through the vast bulk of the property loans it took over from the banks.
As well as repaying the €32 billion it borrowed, it also returned a total surplus including corporation tax of €5.6 billion.
As it is dissolved, its final eight of its staff will transfer to a resolution operation within the NTMA where Mr McDonagh will take on a new role leading a body advising state authorities on investment projects with a capital value of over €75m.
NAMA did a thankless job. But it did what it was asked.
And its critics are much less vocal than they were previously, as an ignominious chapter of Ireland's history comes to an end.
