DUBLIN (AFP) - Ireland's third biggest bank, Anglo Irish Bank, said Wednesday it was seeking to make 230 job cuts in the first phase of a redundancy programme that is expected to see about 450 leave the troubled bank.

Anglo, which was nationalised in January, has been hammered by Ireland's recession and a property price meltdown.

It has received a 4.0 billion euro (5.9 billion dollar) recapitalisation from the government and will transfer the largest amount of soured property loans to a planned "bad bank".

Anglo said the redundancies will bring its workforce to around 1,300 people, down from nearly 1,800 a year ago.

There will be 110 job losses in Ireland, 95 in the UK and 25 in the US and the bank said a second phase of reductions will be "similar in scale".

Mike Aynsley, Anglo chief executive, said the bank will undergo radical change in the coming months and the redundancies are the "first phase of a programme intended to reduce the cost base of the operation and improve efficiency".

Ireland is setting up a "bad bank", the National Asset Management Agency (NAMA), to buy some 77 billion euros in property loans from the main banks at an estimated discount price of 54 billion euros.

Finance Minister Brian Lenihan said Anglo would be transferring about 28.4 billion euros worth of loans to NAMA.