Almost a year after it was launched by the Government, a new agency designed to use empty landbanks across the State for housing needs remains in a legal limbo without powers.

The Government has issued a lengthy rebuttal to the United Nations in response to criticism of the country's housing policies earlier this year.

He said that the National Development Plan and the National Broadband Plan contradicted each other with one encouraging more focus on villages and towns with the other offering “one for everyone in the audience.”

The pioneering Vienna model of housing is the subject of a month-long exhibition which opened yesterday in Dublin.

Housing charity Threshold has urged the government to clarify the long-term status of the rent pressure zone legislation.

Chief executives from some of the country’s best-known firms have been lined up by an enterprising 20-year-old UCC student to appear at a business leaders forum in April.

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Radical proposals to fix the broken housing system include creating a Housing Development Bank which would oversee the spending of €16bn to deliver 80,000 low-cost homes.

The main banks have been accused of getting “up to their old tricks” by “manipulating” the system to prevent people accessing a low-interest mortgage scheme.

The body which oversees works to reverse pyrite damage in properties received more than one application every day last year and believe it will be 2020 before the rate of repair work begins to slow.

“Hidden” homelessness is hampering the development of thousands of children across the country, a group of charities has warned.

Soaring house costs that push people further away from their places of work due to unaffordable property prices are causing a form of “involuntary social engineering”, according to a brokers’ body.

Housing Agency chairman Conor Skehan is facing fresh calls to resign immediately after defending his claims some homeless people are “gaming the system” and that record Irish homeless rates are “normal” by international standards.

A 71-year-old man known as Frank was interviewed onRTÉ Radio One’s Morning Ireland recently. He was due to enter emergency accommodation the following week because his landlord was selling the flat in which he lived.

The business of business is profit while the business of government is welfare, so why is it that for decades various administrations have relied so heavily on business to solve our housing crisis?

The head of a homeless charity has criticised the Government's decision to reappoint the Chair of the Housing Agency.

Focus Ireland says it is concerned at the surprise re-appointment of Conor Skehan as chairman of the Housing Agency, claiming that the move “raises quite significant challenges”.

Housing Minister Eoghan Murphy has disagreed with a claim by the outgoing chair of the Government Housing Agency, Conor Skehan, that some people are pretending to be homeless to skip housing queues.

You are never too young to upgrade your house, making it safe and functional for decades to come, says Margaret Jennings

The problems caused by rapidly rising rents are well documented through endless stories of personal hardship.

New laws to use over-the-shop premises as residences, to set up a special empty-homes unit, and to appoint dedicated officers to progress ‘vacant hot-spot’ areas are among plans to improve housing.

LAST week’s figures, which show that nearly 8,000 citizens of this rich Republic — a third of them children — do not have a home, are as profound a matrix of social and political failure as any civilised, compassionate society should tolerate.

A local authority is to call on the Housing Agency to seek a solution to an issue which has seen half of one of the country’s largest commuter towns excluded from rent control legislation.

Latest: Labour have criticised the Government for leaving Waterford, Limerick and Drogheda out of new rent pressure zones.

The country’s rental market watchdog has seen a spike in cases of landlords wrongly trying to drive through rent hikes in anticipation of capped rates rolling out in areas under new government measures.

The number of houses built increased by nearly 20% last year, according to a Housing Agency report.

The Government is hoping to deliver 30,000 new homes in 23 major urban areas in Cork, Dublin, Limerick and Galway in a bid to relieve the housing crisis, a government report reveals.

The Government says 1,350 people have exited homelessness in the first six months of the year.

A Dublin property development firm is to contribute €1m to the Pyrite Resolution Board to assist with the cost of carrying out work on homes affected by sub-standing construction material.

The Government’s housing plan is set out in five specific pillars.

As Focus Ireland figures show another 74 families became homeless in Dublin last month, the Housing Agency has called for grants to refurbish the hundreds of thousands of homes lying vacant.

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With rents at their highest levels nationally since 2008 and claims from Fr Peter McVerry that new Housing Minister Simon Coveney is facing “a homeless and housing crisis which is out of control”, how does the country address a situation which has been worsening for most of the last decade?

Question: Can you briefly set out what legislation you, in government, would put forward to address the ongoing housing crisis and in particular the issues of homelessness, rising rents and the inability to get started on the housing ladder.

No rent controls, a reduction in Vat on new homes, tax breaks for landlords and an apprenticeship scheme for construction workers are among a list of demands for the Government unveiled by the Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland yesterday.

The Housing Agency’s first National Statement highlights the difficulties besetting efforts to house people. But as Rory Hearne points out, few practical solutions are offered.

21,000 target for new homes for this year In 2014 just over 11,000 new homes became available.

The Housing Minister Paudie Coffey says the private rental sector needs to contribute to the housing crisis.

A generation of Irish people face the prospect of not owning their own property for at least another decade, a major conference on housing has been told.

A Cork-based voluntary housing association has issued an urgent appeal to companies for help in preventing seven families from being evicted.

Two county councils ran up debts of nearly €30m buying land for social housing schemes — only for the sites to later be deemed "unsuitable for residential development".

The CEO of the Housing Agency said the 20% deposit needed for first time buyers is too high in some cases.