Housing support groups have broadly welcomed the Government’s housing plan, which has pledged to ramp up social housing supply, incentivise developers, and ease rental pressures.

Organisations in the social housing and construction sectors have backed the plan, but warned that it must be delivered no matter what government takes power in future.

When Amy Galvin gets the keys to her apartment next week, it won’t just open the door to a new home, it will be a symbol of her innate ability to never give up.

A woman refused a three-storey council house overlooking Cork harbour because she and her children would get sea-sick peering out the window.

The next government has been warned to step up its plans to tackle the social housing crisis after one organisation claimed the current strategy was insufficient given the scale of the problem.

A €13m plan to tackle homelessness in Limerick was launched yesterday by the local authority.

Promises to end long-term homelessness have been welcomed as plans to fix up vacant properties and use state-owned buildings to keep families off the streets in the short-term were unveiled.

Rent controls and use of vacant housing stock — including refitted hotels — should be considered to ease the looming homelessness crisis, experts have claimed.

Social housing organisations yesterday said the fact that 3,500 local authority dwellings are lying empty for more than a month around the country was “a huge waste”.

A voluntary organisation is set to unveil plans to convert a former convent into sheltered housing which will help fill a void in providing accommodation for older couples and single people.

Jim O’Sullivan (Letters, Jul 13) raises a very important point in relation to the recently launched Mortgage to Rent scheme.

An initiative which helps struggling mortgage holders to remain in their homes is being rolled out nationally.

An independent regulator for social housing could be in place within six months, it was yesterday claimed as a study showed increased private financing of social housing schemes could take thousands off waiting lists.

Private finance can help to provide homes to thousands of people on social housing waiting lists.

THE bursting of the property bubble may benefit some of the poorer members of society, as apartments built in anticipation of the boom years continuing are sold to social housing projects to cover debts.

NAMA has delivered on its “social dividend” promise by providing social housing in a top-end Dublin development through the Clúid Housing Association.

The charity behind a new approach to social housing to be launched in Dublin later today is hoping its model of buying "NAMA-ed" homes can be replicated across the country.

THERE’S scarcely a town or village in the country, never mind a city, without a so-called ‘problem estate’ in which houses have fallen into disrepair and the overall appearance is shabby and depressed.

FOUR generations of one Traveller family opened their homes yesterday to show local authorities around the country how a successful housing scheme can work.

THE Catholic Church handed over properties worth €28.6 million, including a three-acre site in Dublin 4 and St Colman’s Home in Cobh, Co Cork, as part of its deal to compensate abuse victims.

THE founder of the Blackrock Clinic is behind a consortium planning to build a multi-million euro private hospital in Cork.

A ROW which delayed a social housing scheme for almost four months has been resolved.

KERRY County Council, which has more than 470 applicants on waiting lists for houses, has reported a ‘mixed’ take-up of low-cost sites.

ONE of the roughest parts of Dublin rang with the sound of children playing safely yesterday.