Dr. Ronan Lyons:

To be completely blunt, the housing deficit is of such scale I do not think there is any realistic scenario in which it is tackled in five years. We are talking probably in the order of 300,000 homes now. Even just addressing the housing deficit in the space of five years, as per the Deputy's questions, would require 60,000 homes per year. There is ongoing need on top of that. If we wanted to address the deficit as quickly as that, we would need 85,000 to 100,000 homes per year. That is the strict answer to the Deputy's question. I do not think the system is able to do that.

By way of finishing my answer, we can look at examples like Sweden's miljonprogrammet project, whereby a million homes were built in the space of ten years with significant state support to address the housing deficit. There are examples of that. Sweden's deficit was, per capita, slightly smaller than ours, but it built homes over ten years. I think five years is too fast.