Mr. John McCarthy:

Rebuilding Ireland is a six year plan. It has two overarching targets. One is to get to an overall housing supply position of 25,000 homes per annum. The other target is the additional 50,000 social housing over the six years. At this point, which is halfway through the six year plan, we are where we should be or slightly ahead. We have talked at this committee previously - and the Deputy has referred to it again - about the extent to which issues in the housing space and the sub parts of the housing space are all connected with each other. If there is inadequate housing supply there are obviously more people competing for the available supply and it has knock-on consequences for rents, for house prices and for homelessness. With Rebuilding Ireland we have tried to address all of those elements of the housing space starting with the overall housing supply to get to the 25,000. The Central Statistics Office now publishes that data, which show we are on track to achieve that.