The Government is "making good traction" on the sale of Irish Life and Permanent Plc's life assurance unit, according to John Moran, head of banking at the Department of Finance.

"Certainly, we haven't picked a good year to be doing this in terms of markets," Mr Moran said today at an Irish investment forum in New York. "We seem to be making good traction on that sale."

Riche Boucher, the chief executive of Bank of Ireland, told the conference that the bank expects to announce further asset sales in coming weeks,

Bank of Ireland said last month that it had agreed to sell €5 billion of loans, including US and UK commercial real- estate portfolios, at an average 9 per cent discount to face value.

The bank also said that it was in advanced discussions with potential purchasers of its Burdale Finance Ltd assets in the UK and other project finance loans.

Recounting the Irish crisis through 2010, when the bank lost €20 billion in deposits, Mr Boucher said that "we felt at that stage that no matter what we'd done, all that was missing was a plague of locusts to come and eat all our cash in our safe deposit boxes."

- (Bloomberg)