Loans originally worth around £3.35 billion (€4 billion) which are linked to assets in Northern Ireland are to be taken on by the National Asset Management Agency.
The figure was given by Peter Stewart, the head of NAMA's advisory committee on Northern Ireland, at an economic conference in Belfast. He described the figure as a 'qualified estimate'.
Mr Stewart estimated that around €2.4 billion of the loans were linked to undeveloped land, €1.2 billion to investment properties and €400m to projects which were in the course of development.
He said Northern Ireland had experienced its own property bubble in undeveloped land. Mr Stewart said that while NAMA did not have to sell 'today, this month or this year', it did have to operate to a ten-year time scale.
'Even over such a period of time it is likely that we will see what was previously viewed as potential development land being sold to go back to farm land. For those builders, developers and also land traders and speculators who got caught up in the frenzy, unfortunately there is going to be financial pain,' he warned.
But Mr Stewart said there was a different situation in relation to residential development, as there did not appear to be such a huge oversupply of homes in the North as there was in the Republic.
He said borrowers faced a choice between working with NAMA or facing enforcement. But he said NAMA was 'acutely aware' of the particular sensitivities of the Northern Ireland economy and market.
