Councils spent €37m on sites for social and affordable housing that were later deemed to be "unsuitable for residential development" by a state agency established to help local authorities deal with the fallout from the economic downturn.

THE Department of Environment is in talks with English housing agencies about off-loading some of the thousands of empty properties in Irish ghost estates.

DEVELOPERS will be forced to finish and clean up ghost estates after a survey found more than 100,000 dwellings are lying empty, incomplete or were planned but never built.