The Irish Council for Social Housing (ICSH) is to host its national conference in Co Offaly over the next two days, 16 - 17 September.

The conference at the Tullamore Court Hotel, O'Moore Street, Tullamore, will focus on the measures needed to stimulate investment in social housing and build cultural acceptance of social housing as an essential public service.

It will be attended by over 300 people, including representatives of non-profit housing associations from throughout Ireland, local authority officials, policymakers and politicians.

Paudie Coffey TD, Minister of State with Special Responsibility for Housing, Planning and Coordination of the Construction 2020 Strategy, will address the opening session of the conference at 9.45am on Wednesday.

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number of international experts on housing are also addressing the event, including:

• Steve Shields, Co-Founder and CEO of Action Pact, an international senior living firm, headquartered in the USA, and renowned for its innovation and high-quality standards.

• Bent Madsen, CEO of the BL Danish Housing Federation, the national federation of social housing organisations in Denmark. In Denmark, there are 7,000 social housing estates with 20 per cent of the population living in social housing.

• Juha Kaakinen, CEO of the Y Foundation in Finland, which is the biggest Finnish NGO acquiring flats from the private market for homeless people and providing social housing.

Donal McManus, CEO of the ICSH, said: "The status of social housing was downgraded in the 1990s, when policymakers began promoting private home ownership over other forms of housing. The sector has failed to recover since.

"To address the current challenges facing the housing sector, we need to ensure social housing is prioritised in the same way as other crucial public services, such as education and health. Over the next two days at our conference, we will be exploring how best to do this."

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