Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 9 March 2023
Select Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach
Estimates for Public Services 2023
Vote 1 - President's Establishment (Revised)
Vote 2 - Department of the Taoiseach (Revised)
Vote 3 - Office of the Attorney General (Revised)
Vote 4 - Central Statistics Office (Revised)
Vote 5 - Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (Revised)
Vote 6 - Office of the Chief State Solicitor (Revised)
Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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Go raibh maith agat a Theachta as do chuid ceisteanna. First, the Housing Commission has not yet reported or given us any advice on new targets. I think there may have been a leak from the commission, but we have yet to receive a report from it on new targets. I look forward to that report and I have met the commission so I have a rough idea of what it will propose but it has not done it yet. It is important to say that in the existing Housing for All plan, the plan is to scale up to 40,000 per year, so there is not a huge gap between what we have planned already and what we believe the Housing Commission will recommend. We need to scale up. I wish we could go from 30,000 last year to 60,000 this year but I think we all appreciate that is not possible. It has to be scaled up and we need to scale it up as fast as possible. Yes, as Taoiseach and as Head of Government, I accept absolute responsibility for dealing with the housing crisis.