A housing development on the outskirts of Tullamore, Co Offaly, may point the way to similar schemes throughout the Republic.
In the past two years, Tullamore has joined the list of commuter towns in Leinster, leading to a dramatic increase in the cost of housing sites in and around the town.
During this period, the average price of a site in the area has been driven up to between £40,000 and £50,000, with the price of building land rising to £150,000 to £200,000 per acre. In a town with a population of 9,800, the number of people on the housing list has increased to 200.
To meet the demand for housing at a reasonable price, Tullamore Urban District Council has put together a mix of local authority, voluntary and private housing which is attracting a great deal of attention from other parts of the State.
Situated in Cloncollagh, within walking distance of the centre of the town, work is already well advanced on the UDC scheme.
"We were faced with a growing problem here in Tullamore as the centre has become more popular with people who want to settle here and this has driven up prices dramatically," said Mr Sean Ryan, the town clerk of Tullamore UDC.
"We already had 40 acres of land on the Portarlington Road and we decided to develop it and provide more housing in the town, but in a way to meet current needs.
"Using best practice from all the sources we could find, both inside and outside the country, we are well advanced on the scheme now.
"We wanted to take the stigma away from local authority housing and help people in the town who wanted to own their homes to achieve that.
"The council decided on a mixed development rather than increasing the density which appears to be the solution elsewhere," he said.
"This is basically still a rural society and people need their space so we bore that in mind when designing the scheme.
"Then we invited Respond, the Waterford-based voluntary housing agency, to get involved. Respond has already one scheme operating here and we are delighted to work with them again. They are involved and want to build 58 units and a community centre.
"We then decided that there should be 58 units for people who are just on the margin of being able to buy their own homes and we are selling them serviced sites. "These sites, about half for bungalows and the rest for two-storey homes, will be sold at a price of between £25,000 and £30,000".
Mr Ryan hoped that among the first to be offered the sites would be people who would surrender their local authority homes, adding to the council's stock.
"If people cannot afford their own homes they will be coming to us to house them and this is a way of meeting that need, which is a growing one," he said.
"The most recent addition to the development, where we have already built 60 homes with 16 more due to be ready early next year, is the Gaelscoil. This is a great addition to the development and it will give the kind of mixed development we hope to achieve there." The project has already created considerable interest throughout the State and there have been a number of queries from other local authorities to the UDC for information on what is being done in Tullamore.