This might be slightly ironic, considering the rigmarole surrounding the intricacies of setting up the National Asset Management Agency (NAMA), but Dublin could serve as a hub for ‘bad bank’ assets (insert own joke here) and one possible area of expertise in demand going forward could be chasing impaired loans.

A recent piece in the Irish Times pointed to the fact that Dublin’s reputation and standing as a financial centre has, not surprisingly, taken a dent in recent months. One possible opportunity in the near future, though, would be serving as a hub to hive off and manage these bad loans.

German Landesbank WestLB has already used Dublin for such a purpose, moving €23bn worth of problem loans over here.

As the newspaper reports, opinion is so far divided:

Pat Farrell, chief executive of the Irish Banking Federation, sees this as a very viable business opportunity for IFSC-based companies which have built up expertise in managing assets, and emphasises that the banks aren’t “bad”, they just have impaired assets. A key attraction of Ireland for locating these assets is that while they may be distressed at present, banks will look to hold them to maturity, at which point Ireland’s low corporate tax will come into play.

But, it adds that it could damage Ireland’s reputation:

Kieran Donoghue, head of international financial services at the IDA, asserts that marketing Ireland as a location for such banks is not on the IDA’s agenda, and he would be concerned about the signal it might send out.

As we said last week, these sort of skills are already in demand within the domestic institutions looking to claw back as much of an under-performing loan as possible. At the senior level, these roles pay €70-90k.

So far, NAMA itself has yet to create many jobs, and has instead hired the services of third-party firms. PricewaterhouseCoopers is going to consult on tax issues, while a team from HSBC will provide banking and financial advice to the agency.