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

Some 18,000 new homes were built last year and we are aiming to have more than 20,000 homes built this year - around 25,000 in fact. The policy is to ensure there is a greater supply of housing: social housing for people on the housing lists; private housing for people who want to buy because most people want to buy their own home; and places available for people to rent.

Any other measures such as rent caps, rent-pressure zones or whatever formula we use are only treating the symptoms and are not actually treating the problem. However, symptomatic treatment is important while we solve the underlying problem. That is why the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government is introducing additional measures to strengthen the rent-pressure zones, to make them more enforceable by giving more powers and resources to the RTB; to change the way they are calculated so that they are calculated differently outside Dublin, because there are parts of the country that would be rent-pressure zones but they are not because the Dublin rents distort things; to extend the notice-to-quit periods and other such measures; and to extend the rent-pressure-zone rules to student accommodation, an issue on which the Minister of State, Deputy Mitchell O'Connor, and the Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, have worked very closely, recognising that many people in student accommodation have seen very big increases in their rents because they had not been covered by this legislation to date.

See this speech in context