Developers are being paid average salaries of between €75,000 and €100,000 a year under business plans approved by Nama, it was revealed today.

Nama chairman Frank Daly told the Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform that in exceptional cases salaries of up to €200,000 were being paid but that this was a commercial decision to retain the best-placed people to recover the value of the loan for the State.

"It is a hard decision, and one we agonise over," he said.

Nama has now approved the sale of €4.6 billion worth of property assets, and more than €900 million in new loan advances to debtors to complete unfinished developments to enhance their value. That compares with the figure of €3.9 billion published in the annual report on July 28th.

Nama expects to make a profit before any further impairment on its loans of at least €500 million, chief executive of the agency Brendan McDonagh said.

Mr McDonagh said the Nama board had signed off on a "highly developed product" allowing house buyers to defer payment on up to 20 per cent of the property's value in an attempt to shift some of the 10,000 residential properties on its books and revive the property market.

The agency was in the "latter stages" of discussions with Bank of Ireland, AIB and Permanent TSB to participate in the payment deferral scheme and had invited the non-Nama banks to join the scheme.

He told the committee that receivers have been appointed in 84 cases. He said borrowers owing about 10 to 15 per cent of the €72.3 billion of loans to the agency had not yet accepted the reality of their situation and receivers had been appointed in these cases.

In the case of a further 20 per cent of debtors, the agency has found their positions to be "unviable" or those borrowers do not want to "put the effort in" to help Nama recover its loans. Borrowers with debts amounting to 65 to 70 per cent of Nama's portfolio are co-operating, he said.

Mr McDonagh said Nama had been through business plans on €22 billion of the €30 billion cost value of loans and that there was "no huge pot of gold there" in terms of asset transfers to family members.

Nama was "very close" to taking court actions against unco-operative debtors who had transferred assets to family member out of the reach of the State agency, he said.

Mr Daly said that no developers have had their debts forgiven but that if there were no assets remaining to repay loans then their debts would eventually have to be written off. "It is only something that would be considered way down the line," he said.

Mr Daly told the committee that it was Nama's intention to recover as much of the €72.3 billion face value of loans it has acquired for €30.5 billion but that it would become more difficult for every billion beyond the price paid for the loans and that the agency would stop seeking repayments "where it is uneconomic to pursue it further".

Mr Daly said that the agency expected to break even at least but he was still confident that it would make a profit.

International investors would price in a hit of 20 per cent on the value of commercial property if a ban was introduced on upward-only rent reviews, he said.

Mr McDonagh said assets held outside of Ireland were the best prospect for debtors in generating the sales that needed to meet their repayment targets over the next couple of years.

“A significant proportion of the underlying property is located in the southeast of England, and this is attracting strong interest from international investors,” he said.

Mr McDonagh insisted the sales process would be competitive, saying the agency was seeking to ensure it achieved the best attainable price. It is in talks with a number of serious bidders, he told the committee.

"Over the coming months, we expect that some substantial transactions currently in the pipeline will proceed to sale and that the proceeds will help to reduce our debt and that of some of our debtors,” he said.

Speaking before the committee, John Corrigan, head of the National Treasury Management Agency, said the Government will have to tap the euro zone's permanent bailout fund, the European Stability Mechanism, if the State has not raised "substantial cash buffers" by the end of the EU-IMF bailout programme in 2013.

Mr Corrigan said the NTMA hoped to extend short-term borrowing through 2012 and to start borrowing in the long-term debt markets again as soon as possible, but he declined to say when exactly.

"As to when we return to the long-term bond markets . . . the earlier the better. Obviously, the later in 2013 the capital market will ratchet the price up against you," he said.

"We have to get back into the market as early as possible in 2013," he said. The Government couldn't leave it until the end of 2013 to raise funding to repay a bond of about €11 billion in January 2014. There was no specific plan to borrow long-term at a particular date or interest rate, he said.

"There isn't a box that has a secret plan with a rate and date."

Mr Corrigan said timing of decisions would depend on "many different circumstances" and Ireland's continued success in implementing the EU/IMF programme. He estimated that the State would make a saving of €830 million in 2012 as a result of the reduction agreed in July on the EU bailout loans and that it would be €1.1 billion per annum in subsequent years.

Mr Corrigan said that it would be "very challenging" to raise the cash to repay the January 2014 bond, on which the State owes €11.8 billion.

If the Government sought greater savings in the budget to reduce the deficit in the public finances below the target of 8.6 per cent next year then it would make the NTMA's job easier to start borrowing more in the short-term debt markets in the second half of next year, he said.

The Government and NTMA had "rooted out the rot" in the Irish banking system, he said, but added there were big problems in European banking.

Mr Corrigan declined to comment on whether the Government should impose haircuts on senior unsecured unguaranteed bondholders at Anglo Irish Bank whose chief executive Mike Aynsley said yesterday it was "questionable" what value there was to be gained from the exercise.

"Unlike my colleague in Anglo Irish, I think it would be most unwise to express a view," said Mr Corrigan, saying that he was unwilling to "enter the area of market speculation".

Passionately defending the NTMA's performance and pay bill, Mr Corrigan said the agency was established on private sector pay levels in 1990 and had to pay these levels for the work that it did. The debt agency had performed well prior to the EU-IMF bailout, raising €16 billion for the State in the debt markets, he said.

"It wasn't the failure of the NTMA to do its funding that blew the country up - it was the failure of the banks," he said.

Mr Corrigan said that the concerns about remuneration levels at the NTMA were "understandable" but the debate had to take place in the context of what business model the Government wanted for the State's debt management agency. It involved skilled people doing demanding work, he said.

"I can understand why people's eyebrows are raised when salaries and bonuses - which of course is a dirty word - in the NTMA. The debate in the first instance is around the NTMA's business model," he said.