N.Ireland warns Dublin's "bad bank" cld hit market
DUBLIN, July 6 (Reuters) - The Northern Ireland Executive wants to ensure the "bad bank" being set up by the Republic of Ireland does not lead to a crash in Northern Ireland's property market, First Minister Peter Robinson said on Monday.
Dublin is creating a National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) to take over the property loans and related collateral of Irish banks with a nominal value of 80 billion euros ($111.8 billion), which would give it more assets than any listed property firm in the world.
Analysts have warned NAMA would need to tread carefully in the Irish property market, which has not started to recover yet after its spectacular crash two years ago helped push the country deep into recession.
Some of the underlying assets earmarked for NAMA are held outside the Republic of Ireland, including in the British-controlled province of Northern Ireland, by clients of banks such as Bank of Ireland (BKIR.I) and Allied Irish Banks (ALBK.I).
"The Northern Ireland Executive is looking at the disposal of assets and there are assets which are being held by NAMA which impact on Northern Ireland," Robinson said at a joint news conference of the two governments in Dublin.
"Those disposals need to be handled in a way that we don't swamp the property market and impact adversely on property prices in Northern Ireland," Robinson added.
Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen, who plans to publish the legislation establishing NAMA later in the summer, said he would coordinate with authorities in Belfast about its implementation. (Reporting by Andras Gergely; Editing by David Holmes)
