The Finance Minister introduced an additional 500 million euro for a direct building programme to tackle the homeless crisis.

Homeless services are being increase by 18 million euro bringing the total available for emergency accomodation to 116 million euro.

While an extra 31 million is being made for social housing expenditure.

The additional funding for the Direct Building Programme will build an extra thousand social homes a year over the next 3 years:

Builders, meanwhile have welcomed measures introduced to stimulate construction.

Significantly, the Home Building Finance Agency will provide access to funding for construction.

Tom Parlon is Director of the Construction Industry Federation:

Francis Doherty is from the Peter Mc Verry Trust