Updated at 3.20pm

TAOISEACH ENDA KENNY, Housing Minister Simon Coveney and other Cabinet members have announced details of the government’s housing plan this afternoon.

It includes a plan to spend over €5 billion on social housing over the next five years. Hotels will only be used in limited circumstances to provide accommodation for homeless families from next year, the government is pledging.

The new social housing units would be in “mixed tenure” developments, Coveney said – meaning social housing would be placed in areas where people also own their homes outright.

“When driving into estates you are not going to know the difference,” the minister said.

The housing plan was one of the marquee projects announced in the programme for government. Published in May, that document set out an aim of building 25,000 new houses a year by 2020. Last year, building on just 8,000 homes was begun.

“In the next five years, we are going to provide about 50,000 more social houses for our people,” Coveney said.

This is about integrating communities so they can live together, grow up together and not be segregated on the basis of what they can afford and where they can afford to live.

The plan is set out in five ‘pillars’ – summarised under the following headings in the official report:

Address homelessness

Accelerate social housing

Build more homes

Improve the rental sector

Utilise existing housing