THE NATIONAL Asset Management Agency will not engage in any activity that would destabilise the property market in Northern Ireland, its chairman Frank Daly said on a visit to Belfast yesterday.

Nama has loans in Northern Ireland with a nominal value of £3.35 billion (€4 billion), which represents four per cent of its total portfolio.

The North’s DUP Minister of Finance Sammy Wilson has previously expressed concern that any precipitate selling of these assets could cause upheaval in the local property market.

“We are interested in stabilising the market,” Mr Daly insisted yesterday. “We are not interested in fire sales or dumping property or adding to the problems in the market already.”

The £3.5 billion in loans are held by 180 individual debtors and is broken down as £2 billion of undeveloped land, £1 billion of investment property and £350 million of underdeveloped property and land.

Almost a third of this land and property is in Belfast, with 19 per cent in Co Antrim, excluding Belfast, and 10 per cent in Derry. As with the rest of its portfolio, there are business plans for 90 per cent of the Northern loans, said Mr Daly.

Nama could experience particular difficulty in selling off the high proportion of undeveloped land as it is also competing with the Northern Executive, which is hoping to realise hundreds of millions of pounds from its land bank.

Mr Daly said it was conscious of these difficulties, was in contact with the Executive in relation to how it would dispose of the undeveloped land, and was prepared to take a “long view” in relation to these assets.

He said Nama wanted to “devise tailored solutions” for the North. “We want to ensure that our approach is appropriately tuned for the Northern Ireland market.”