Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We will have 21,000 individuals and families housed this year. In some cases, people will be moving into newly built council houses, while in others they wil be moving into voids that have been brought back into use. Others will be housed through the housing assistance payment, HAP, scheme which Deputy Micheál Martin's party supported, or the rent supplement scheme. There is a significant number of people who are being housed every year. The figures the Deputy gave, in some ways, tell the story of the progress being made. Only two years ago we were in a situation where virtually no council houses or apartments were being built. We got to the hundreds last year. The figure will be in the thousands this year and next year will be up around 3,800. It takes time to ramp up housing supply; it just cannot be done overnight, but it is something to which we are committed to doing. Next year we expect between 20,000 and 25,000 houses to be built, of which somewhere between 4,000 and 5,000 will be social houses which will get us back to the point - this is good policy - where roughly 20% of new housing stock will be social housing. We have a €5.4 billion funded plan to do exactly that and there will also be other measures.

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