Data from Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, showed the average house price changes in the first quarter of 2015, compared to a year ago.

It found Ireland was the home to the fastest growing house prices, up 16% on the same point in 2014. Sweden (+11.6%) and Hungary (+9.7%) were the next biggest rises while the United Kingdom (+8.5%) was in fourth place.

At the other end of the scale, Latvia was the country that saw property values decrease fastest. Prices in the Baltic country were down 5.8% on the year before.

Greece was not included in the survey due to its ongoing financial turmoil.

Italy (-3.3%), France (-1.6%) and Slovenia (-1.4%) were the nations that saw the next biggest price falls.

Across all countries in the European Union, barring Greece, prices were up by an average of 0.9% year-on-year. In countries with the euro as currency, this figure was 2.5%.

Compared previous quarter, the biggest increases were recorded in Romania (+4.1%), Sweden (+3.9%), Hungary (+3.7%) while property prices in Belgium, Cyprus and Croatia were all down 2.8%.