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

The Government acknowledges the enormous challenges we face as a country when it comes to housing. All of us feel particularly strongly about the fact that there are families living in emergency accommodation. While the family hubs are much better than hotels and bed and breakfast accommodation they are by no means a long-term solution. It is our objective to reduce the number of families experiencing homelessness, living in emergency accommodation, month on month, year on year. There was a slight fall in the number last month but we want to see it continuing to fall very month into the future. We want to minimise the number of people who end up in emergency accommodation and, if people end up in it, we want to make sure it is for a very short period of time, for weeks or maybe a few months but certainly not for years.

I do not think it is possible for anyone to say there will never be anyone who has to go into emergency accommodation. There always have been a certain number of people in emergency accommodation for one reason or another, particularly people who become homeless suddenly who were not on the housing list, but it should not be the type of figures it is now. We want to make sure it starts falling and continues to fall.

With respect to housing, I am somebody who is very committed to home ownership. This Government believes in home ownership. As the Deputy pointed out 68% to 70% of people in Ireland own their own home, which is much higher than in most European countries. I know others prefer a European housing solution based on renting for life, a public housing and social housing based solution. I believe in home ownership and that people should be able to own their own home, that that is a socially desirable thing. In order to deliver high levels of home ownership, we need the private market and the private sector because it has never been the case that Governments build houses for people to own. Governments build houses for people to rent-----

See this speech in context