Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

There was very strong delivery in quarter 4. It was a matter of a debate that we had in the Dáil Chamber and, indeed, at committee. Last year, the outturn was 29,851 new homes across all tenures. That figure has been verified by the Central Statistics Office, the independent agency the State depends on and respects. If others want to call the CSO figures into question, they must state whether they also call into question other statistics published by that office.

That is a dangerous path to go down. Completions were strong in the last quarter and that can be seen on the ground. Commencements remain strong too. For the information of members, there were 2,108 new housing commencements in January. That is the highest number of commencements in January since we began collating those records in 2014.

To get back to the Deputy's point, the Housing for All plan targeted 24,600 last year and we exceeded that target by more than 5,000. By any yardstick that is a good performance in a difficult year. We know we need to do more. We have a target this year of 29,000 and we intend to exceed that also. In the coming weeks I will be publishing the returns for both social and affordable housing delivery. We are awaiting final returns from some of the local authorities. Again, those will be verified figures and will very much feed into the overall figure of 29,851.