Image copyright AP Image caption Taoiseach (Irish Prime Minister) Enda Kenny has been seeking agreement with the leaders of other Irish parties on the format of an inquiry into the 'Project Eagle' deal

An agreement has been reached between the Irish government and opposition that there should be a statutory investigation into Nama.

The £1.2bn sale of Nama's NI property loan portfolio was the biggest property deal in NI's history.

Since July 2015, it has been the subject of a series of allegations of impropriety and political interference.

Submissions on what should be investigated are to go to the Irish prime minister within the next week.

Any outline for an inquiry will ultimately have to be debated in the Irish parliament when it returns at the end of the month.

The National Asset Management Agency (Nama) was set up by the Irish government to take control of impaired loans that were damaging the banking sector.

Nama's Northern Ireland property loan sale, known as Project Eagle, is already the subject of several ongoing investigations.

Image caption Nama is the Republic of Ireland's 'bad bank', set up to deal with toxic loans after the 2008 property crash

They include probes by the UK's National Crime Agency (NCA), the Northern Ireland Assembly's finance committee and Garda (Irish police) Bureau of Fraud Investigation.

On Wednesday, the Republic of Ireland's spending watchdog said shortcomings in the sales process in 2014 cost Irish taxpayers up to £190m.

Nama disputes that finding.

Limitations

Sean Fleming, the chair of the Irish parliament's Public Accounts Committee, said any inquiry in the Republic of Ireland would have limitations.

"There are two separate issues - one is the loss of money to the Irish taxpayer and how Nama handled the sales process," he said.

"That's very much not a criminal matter, it's a competence matter. Did they do a good job, did they manage their business properly?

"But secondly, there are other criminal matters which I don't think anybody in the Republic will have any authority to investigate - matters that maybe happened north of the border.

"That's always going to be an issue even if we do set up an inquiry.

"There will be limitations because of jurisdiction one way or the other and we'll probably be relying on the PSNI and the British fraud squad to maybe get to the bottom of some of those particular issues."