Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Under Rebuilding Ireland, which is a €6 billion programme over five years, we will meet the housing needs of 130,000 people, which is quite something, although only 50,000 will go into social housing stock However, as we move beyond Rebuilding Ireland into Project Ireland 2040, and the first ten-year horizon in the national development plan to 2027, we will bring an average of 12,000 homes per year after 2021 into the social housing stock. That will have a big impact in continuing to put people into social housing homes rather than have them rely on the private rental sector. Many will want to rely on the private rental sector and we will have to strike a balance but we will not stop building.

I wanted to ensure that during my time in office I put in place a successor plan for Rebuilding Ireland, and Project Ireland 2040 is the beginning of that plan. We know what the ambition and the funding requirement are and we can fill out the details as we get closer to 2021. Based on what the local authorities are doing now, we will have built seven times as many social housing homes by the end of 2018 as we did in 2016, although the number built that year was low.

Recently, I visited a site in Wicklow. It is 16 years since Wicklow County Council built any homes. Some local authorities have been out of the game for a while and we are now restarting the engines.