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

It depends on how one defines a housing crisis. One might define it as having families in emergency accommodation. Very regrettably, there will be families in emergency accommodation for quite some time to come because we must build houses or find houses on the rental market for them. At the same time, we must strengthen the rental market to try to prevent from people falling into emergency accommodation. It will take a few months to pass laws in that regard and for those laws to bed down.

There are many ways to measure the crisis. One could measure it in terms of housing output. Some 4,500 new homes were built in the last quarter. At a steady state and disregarding pent-up demand we require approximately 6,000 homes per quarter. Taking pent-up demand into account, we probably need approximately 8,500 homes. We are not too far off what we need to produce in housing supply per quarter. We will reach a point in the coming year at which sufficient homes will be built per quarter to meet stable state requirements and pent-up demand.