Ireland aims to end housing shortage by doubling output by 2019

By Padraic Halpin DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ireland will aim to at least double its housing output by 2019, the government said on Tuesday, announcing a raft of measures to tackle a chronic shortage that is raising living costs and homelessness. Ireland was left with a surplus of houses after a 2008 property crash that cut values in half but while some out-of-town housing estates lie empty, property has become scarce in cities like Dublin where the population is growing rapidly. The government will speed up the planning process, assist first-time buyers and boost social housing to address the failure for the last six years to build half the 25,000 homes analysts say are needed nationwide each year to meet demand. "We want to get to 25,000 by 2019, and I agree with many that we need to go well beyond 25,000 in terms of making up for the deficit that has been there now for a decade. In many ways, we need to get to between 30,000 to 35,000," Irish housing minister Simon Coveney told a news conference. While property prices are recovering and are now a third below peak, the cost of a building a new house exceeds the sale price in many instances and Coveney said government would help cut the cost by funding infrastructure projects on key sites and by freeing up state-owned land for residential development. A Help to Buy scheme similar to the British government's mortgage guarantee programme will be introduced in October's budget to help boost demand among first-time buyers, alongside supply side measure to try to stop the scheme just resulting in higher house prices. Coveney said the government would discuss the scheme with Ireland's Central Bank which introduced strict new deposit rules to curb excessive mortgage lending last year. The scheme will be back-dated to ensure activity does not stall in the meantime. The National Asset Management Agency (NAMA), the 'bad bank' set up in 2009 to mop up toxic assets in the financial system, will also be put under pressure to see if it can deliver more than the 20,000 new homes it has promised to build by 2020, Coveney said. Rents have soared as a result of the shortages and are above peaks hit during the property boom in Dublin, damaging Ireland's competitiveness and driving an increasing number of families still suffering from the financial crisis into homelessness. (Editing by Angus MacSwan)