Housing Minister Simon Coveney will face protests in Cork this morning at a regional briefing on the Government’s multibillion-euro plan to tackle the housing crisis.

The Government will today announce initiatives to build and buy thousands of houses and units in a short space of time to tackle homelessness and social housing waiting lists.

The Government’s new housing strategy, released today, will “not be on the scale required” to fix the housing market crisis, according to Séan Healy, director of Social Justice Ireland.

Housing Minister Simon Coveney has said future development plans must be a “game-changer” if the housing and homelessness crisis is to be solved.

Sean MacCarthaigh crunches the figures from both the Residential Property Price Register and the Private Residential Tenancies Board Rent Index to provide a composite view of how both markets fared against a background of a housing crisis where affordability has become a key issue for both prospective buyers and tenants.