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

When it comes to our economic and social policies more generally, the Government really works under six main principles. The first is managing our public finances prudently, having got into a situation where the budget is balanced and running surpluses on occasion, and paying down the national debt.

The second principle is full employment and we will reach our targets in that regard that quite soon. We are expecting that figures in June will indicate that more people in Ireland are at work than ever before. We also want to make sure that employment is quality employment that pays well, gives people a degree of security, is family friendly and provides pensions. Auto-enrolment is a part of that plan.

The third principle is raising living standards. Living standards in Ireland are rising, deprivation and poverty are falling and income inequality is narrowing, which we know from the CSO statistics.

The fourth principle is investment in infrastructure, housing and healthcare, with a focus on transport. Next year there will be a 25% increase in our infrastructure budget compared with this year. We have set out how we will spend €116 billion on public infrastructure over ten years.

The fifth principle is the reform of public services. We have now reversed the cuts in terms of spending. Education and health spending are at an all-time high. We now need to make sure that those additional, record resources actually result in good outcomes and good results for taxpayers, students and patients.

The sixth principle is the idea of Global Ireland and doubling our global footprint. We will produce a detailed plan on that in the next couple of weeks.

Everyone acknowledges that we have a housing shortage in Ireland, and we are all aware of how that happened. There was a seven-year period during which the Government could not afford to build social housing, the banks could not finance the construction of housing and the construction sector was on its knees. Virtually no houses were built in the country during that time and we now have a deficit of approximately 250,000 units, in terms of additional houses and apartments that need to be built. We added 7,000 houses to the social housing stock in a number of different ways, including purchases from developers, direct builds by councils and direct builds by approved housing bodies. That is the biggest increase in our social housing stock for many years. Having added 7,000 houses to our social housing stock next year, we plan to increase that to 10,000 or 11,000 a year, which the amount of social housing we need. We have to build up to that number; they cannot all be built at once.

The conversation around housing should not revolve around social housing entirely. We need to bear in mind that the vast majority of people do not qualify for and do not want social housing but rather want to buy their own homes and to save for that. However, there is a need to provide homes for that purpose which are affordable. In my constituency house building is really taking off again. As 18,000 new homes commenced construction in the past year, we are a little bit short of what is required to get to equilibrium, which is approximately 25,000. We believe we will get to that number next year and it will rise again to 35,000 the year after. The plan is working but it is working slowly, which is an inevitability, unfortunately. Housing construction cannot be ramped up as quickly as we would like, given that it reached such a nadir as a consequence of the financial crisis.

I am aware that there is a very active debate on homelessness statistics. Deputies Eoghan Murphy and Eoin Ó Broin are debating the issue all the time. I am not particularly interested in getting involved in that debate. Both figures, 9,000 or 10,000 people, in emergency accommodation represent too many people; there are many more than there used to be and I am not going to pretend otherwise. It is important that we focus on solutions and do not argue over categories and subcategories but if others want to have that debate, they are welcome to have it.

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