Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

-----developing our housing policy on the back of trying to make developers happy. We have developed a housing policy that can deliver homes for people. We are going to add an extra 50,000 social housing units onto the existing stock over the lifetime of the Rebuilding Ireland plan and we are on schedule to do that. We are not relying on the private sector to deliver them. On a temporary basis, while we are adding the necessary numbers to our social housing, we have an over-reliance on the rental market and we are supporting people in the rental market through HAP and other mechanisms. We have always said that. That is because the problems of today cannot be solved immediately because it takes time to build homes. While we are building those homes, there is pressure and an over-reliance on a rental market which is why we have, on a temporary basis, introduced rent caps through rent pressures zones, to be able to limit the increases in rents that people have to cope with.

Anybody who suggests that one can solve this housing crisis overnight is either misleading people deliberately or is naive. It cannot be done overnight. This is a five-year housing plan and we are on target, despite the fact that there are still serious pressures that need to be resolved.

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