Finance Ireland pulls new mortgages due market chaos

DUBLIN, Feb 22 (Reuters) - Finance Ireland FIRE.I (FIRE) said on Friday had temporarily stopped offering equity-release mortgages in Ireland, its principal business, due to the turmoil in global credit markets.

FIRE, one of Ireland's smallest companies by market value, said it had sufficient resources to continue operating its current business and that it would continue to manage existing portfolios and honour all existing loan offers.

"At a time when credit markets are all but closed, it just does not make financial sense for a niche player like ourselves to continue to fund new lending," Chairman Billy Kane said in a trading statement.

Kane said FIRE FIRE.L would reintroduce the products when normal credit conditions returned.

Last year FIRE sold its minority stake in subprime mortgage firm Nua Homeloans Limited to majority shareholder Investec Ireland amid uncertainty in the financial markets.

Its primary business has been selling mortgages to people over the age of 60 so that they can access equity built up in their homes. It does so under the SHIP brand.

"We're very comfortable with the quality of both our reversionary asset and loan portfolios developed over the last number of years," Kane said.

Shares in the company, which will update investors when it issues full-year results in early April, were untraded in both Dublin and London. (Reporting by Jonathan Saul; Editing by Quentin Bryar)