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

I thank the Deputy for the question. I am very sorry to hear about that case he illustrated in his contribution. I do not want to comment on the detail without knowing all of the facts and information. It would be inappropriate to do so. What I do know is that pregnancy or having a child is not grounds for eviction - that would be illegal - and is certainly not grounds for issuing a notice to quit. That is why we have bodies such as Threshold and others that can assist people if they find themselves dealing with a landlord of that nature. We also have the Residential Tenancies Board, RTB, a public body set up by the Government, to help enforce the rights of tenants. As a Government we have enhanced tenants' rights and we have given more resources to the Residential Tenancies Board to deal with matters such as that. While most landlords may well be very good people who provide much needed rental accommodation, there are bad landlords and we have laws to deal with them and we have an enforcement mechanism through the RTB to deal with them as well. I do not know how the case described by Deputy Ó Laoghaire ended, but that is how it should have been dealt with.

We disagree on some things, but there are some things we agree on, and one of those is that the core of the solution to the housing shortage is more supply. That is exactly what we are doing: building more homes, council houses and social housing for people on the housing list, more private housing, because most people want to buy their own home, and more homes for people to rent. More supply is what is required.

Where have we come from and where are we now? Before the Government launched its housing plan, Rebuilding Ireland, three and a half years ago, housing supply was on the floor. Only about 7,000 houses were built in the year before Rebuilding Ireland was launched. We are now up to 20,000 houses being built this year and probably 25,000 houses next year. When it comes to social housing, in the Deputy's own city of Cork, the council only built about one social house before Rebuilding Ireland was launched, but about 1,000 houses are now under construction or in process. This year, we will build and provide more social housing than in any year this century, through the boom and the bust. We are delivering on housing supply - homes for people to buy, because that is what most people want, but also social housing because that is what some people need.

It was never going to be possible to go from a situation where virtually no houses were being built to suddenly having 35,000 or 40,000 houses being built every year, which is where we need to go to. No Government and no party, no matter the resources or the will, can just turn housing construction on and off like a tap. We had a collapse in this country's economy ten years ago. The Government was bust and did not build any housing for a very long time. The Fine Gael-Labour Party Government would have built more housing if we could have afforded to, but we could not. The banks were bust and not in a position to lend to builders, while the construction industry was on the floor as well. It went bust and nearly 100,000 people emigrated as a result, many of them construction workers. It was never going to be the case that we could just turn back on the tap.

When one compares where we were three years ago to where we are now on supply, it has been a dramatic turnaround. We need to build on that to make sure we continue to increase the supply of housing. That is how we will get on top of this crisis.

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