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

The housing crisis is very real and it affects many of our citizens and our constituents, including people we know, in many different ways be it through high or unaffordable rents in some cases, be it the struggle to secure a mortgage and to raise a deposit to buy ones own hone, or the sharpest end of the housing crisis, which is rough sleeping and family homelessness. Rebuilding Ireland is our five-year housing plan. We are now three and a half years into that five-year plan and it is reasonable to ask the question as to whether it is delivering. The Deputy has asked that question and I will give a few examples on how it is delivering. In 2015 only 7,000 new homes were built in Ireland. This was the year before Rebuilding Ireland. This year, over 20,000 new homes will be built in Ireland, roughly a trebling of housing supply since Rebuilding Ireland, our housing plan, was launched.

House prices were rising at 7% or 8% per year. They have now levelled off. We know that, before Rebuilding Ireland was introduced in 2015, the social housing stock was only being increased by about 6,000 per year. It is going to be 10,000 this year, the largest increase in any year this century during boom and during bust. We will see from the figures that will come out today, if they have not come out already that, while overall homelessness levels continue to rise, we are seeing a fall in child homelessness, a fall in family homelessness and the number of people rough sleeping-----

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