The Irish government has begun demolishing 40 housing estates built during the boom but still empty. It is working out how to deal with a further 1,300 unfinished developments, and Deutsche Bank has warned that it will take 43 years to fill the oversupply of empty homes in Ireland at the current low population growth rate.

Scandal Of Europe’s 11m Empty Homes (Rupert Neate, Guardian)

Alternatively:

The plan includes a fast-track system to allow builders to change existing planning permission and shift the focus to family-sized homes rather than shoebox apartments.
And a more formalised system of planning will be put in place to look at the housing, demographic and immigration trends. Reductions in development levies for builders are also proposed, as councils now have fresh income from the property tax.
In a further measure, the controversial requirement for builders to give one-fifth of new homes over to social housing will be reduced substantially or abolished completely.
The whole plan is aimed at tripling the number of houses built from 8,000 units last year to 25,000 by 2016.

Plan to boost supply of family homes will create 60,000 jobs (Fionnan Sheahan, Independent.ie)

Thanks Sue Armstrong.

(Graphic: Guardian)