NAMA has hired advisers to find buyers for the loans, the source said, which have been split into two portfolios and will be sold at a discount to their one billion-plus euro par value.

A spokesman for the agency declined to comment on the matter.

The so-called "bad bank", created in 2009 to purge Irish banks of some 74 billion euros of risky loans, has so far generated 10.5 billion euros ($13.9 billion) in cash, two thirds from asset disposals, mostly outside Ireland.

Just over half of the properties on NAMA's books are based in Ireland where residential property prices have halved and commercial values fallen by around two-thirds since the spectacular bursting of a property bubble in 2008.

Even after it applied an average discount of 57 percent when taking over the banks' bad assets, Ireland's budget watchdog said last year that the loans had been overvalued and that NAMA would struggle to recoup its costs.

The agency, charged over its planned 10-year lifespan with recovering the 32 billion euros it paid for the loans, also has 1.5 billion euros worth of Irish assets on the market, it said earlier this month.