Ms Colette Bennett:

Our targets are based on setting 20% of all housing stock as social housing. That is done in other European countries that we wish to emulate and this would effectively double our social housing provision.

On overall housing provision, I note that the economic development plan has a target of 33,000 units per year. That is very good as a starting point but what that covers, however, is what is necessary to account for demographic changes and obsolescence. It does not account for the legacy need of decades of insufficient construction. Again, when we talk about what we are looking at specifically, we are talking about social housing provision. Our target would cover the current need into the future. As to the private provision, that is worthy of greater consideration. The 33,000 units is greater than what was set out in the Rebuilding Ireland plan, which was anywhere from 25,000 units per year to 25,000 units on average per year. This is certainly something that needs to be expanded further.