Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I did not mention anything about press releases or statistics; it is Deputy Doherty who brought that up. One thing I am absolutely certain will not solve our housing crisis or the challenge we face in dealing with homelessness is political point scoring. It will not provide a house for anyone or bring down anybody's rent or make it easier for anyone to get a mortgage or find a home. Political point scoring will achieve nothing in solving people's real problems. I do not think it is the kind of issue that one should try to exploit politically.

I did not mention press releases, rather I mentioned the concrete things the Government is doing, including the significant increase in spending on housing, ranging from emergency housing which we provide for people and the increasing amount of social housing that is being built. Only a few hundred social housing units were being built a couple of years ago and now it is up in the thousands. We expect that up to 4,000 homes will be built this year and the change to the planning regulations will make it more affordable to build apartments.

A point made by Sr. Stanislaus Kennedy this morning that struck me, and she made a very valid point, was that we are seeing all over Dublin, and other cities as well, student accommodation being built. I see cranes all over Dublin and in other cities where commercial property, hotels and student accommodation is being built. All of this is welcome but we need to ask ourselves the fundamental question as to why we are seeing a significant level of construction but not the construction of residential property. There is some residential development and the figures show that 40% more homes were built in February 2018 compared to February 2017, but it is not ramping up enough. It seems to be economic and profitable to build student accommodation, hotels and commercial property and we need to try to work out in the next couple of week why it is not as profitable to build residential property.

We need to be very careful that any policy interventions by Government do not inadvertently make the situation worse. We must consider the possibility that some of the Opposition proposals might do that or perhaps some of the things that Government has done in the past, while well intentioned may have actually been counterproductive.