Irish toxic property buy-in tops EUR 72bn

(DUBLIN) - Ireland's 'bad bank' has snapped up toxic property loans held by the country's crippled lenders worth a total of 72.3 billion euros ($107.4 billion), it announced on Wednesday.

However, the National Assets Management Agency (NAMA) said it had paid only 30.5 billion euros towards the loans.

"Another EUR3.5 billion of loans may potentially be acquired over the coming months," NAMA added in the statement, which was presented to parliament by Irish Finance Minister Michael Noonan.

NAMA was created by the Irish government two years ago to buy toxic or high-risk assets from banks at a heavily discounted price, in an attempt to cleanse the nation's crisis-hit banking sector.

The state-owned agency also revealed on Wednesday that it suffered an annual loss of 714 million euros last year.

"The opening months of 2011 have been exceptionally busy," NAMA chairman Frank Daly said in the quarterly report.

"NAMA moved from a period of intensive analysis of the position of the largest individual debtors to the next phase of the project where the focus is on identifying those we believe we can work with and moving others into the enforcement process."

He added: "I would also emphasise that a majority of the debtors are working cooperatively and in a businesslike way with NAMA ... to the advantage of the taxpayer."

NAMA has meanwhile reviewed the business plans of the largest 30 debtors, representing 27 billion euros of acquired loans or 37 percent of the total loan portfolio.

The report says agreement has been reached with 16 debtors and is close to agreement with another two.

After years of reckless lending the Irish banking sector was hammered by the international financial crisis and the collapse of a domestic property bubble that saw prices plummet by over 50 percent.

Last November, Ireland had to seek an 85-billion-euro rescue package from the EU and the IMF as massive debt and deficit problems left the country on the verge of collapse.