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

I thank the Deputy for raising this important issue. When it comes to the Cabinet, there is no denial whatsoever of the enormous economic and social challenge we face as a result of the housing crisis and its worst and most distressing aspect - family homelessness, with children not being able to go home at night and having to do their homework on a hotel bed. The Government is aware of the seriousness of the issue and determined to do all it can to alleviate it. It is important to double back a little and not forget how it came about. There was a seven-year period during which almost no new homes were built and almost no social housing was built by the Government because we could not afford to do so because of the perilous state of the public finances. There was an almost seven-year period during which the private sector was not producing new homes because of the collapse of the banks and the construction sector. That is the backdrop against which we are trying to deal with this enormous social crisis which involves a deficit of as many as 250,000 homes, on which we need to catch up on in the next period. However, I believe the actions taken by the Government in the past year or two are starting to show results. For example, when it comes to rent controls, approximately half of those who become homeless do so because they have lost their place in the private rented accommodation sector. In the past two quarters we have seen rents increase by or less than 1%. That is evidence the rent controls the Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, has brought forward are having an effect.

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