NAMA could be gone by 2020, Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe has said, as the bad-bank National Asset Management Agency reports that its projected life-time surplus has risen to €3.5B following 2017 profits of €481M after tax.

However, NAMA Chairman Frank Daly has cast doubt on the plan to close by 2020 saying that some sites will not have yielded their maximum return by this date. These include the long-running plans to develop the 20-acre Irish Glass Bottle site at Ringsend, which is slated for 2,500 new homes. The agency "still had work to do" the Irish Examiner reported him saying.

In the next few weeks the agency, formed in 2009, is expected to market €250M in loans relating to Mahon Point shopping centre Cork, and linked to late developer Owen O’Callaghan, the Irish Times reports.

Donohoe may be contemplating the transformation of NAMA from the state's bad bank into a more flexible provider of housing finance of the kind he proposed in the budget, the Irish Times reports.

The agency's annual report reveals that it has so far funded 7,300 homes with another 3,800 under construction or approved for funding, and a further 7,500 units in the pipeline.