Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Tánaiste's speech was to the Fine Gael Ard-Fheis and, as leader of that party, the Tánaiste is quite entitled to address and present the Fine Gael perspective on a variety of issues. The Ministers for Finance and Public Expenditure and Reform last evening presented us with an overview and presentation of the summer economic statement. It may be characterised as a more sober assessment of the situation over the next five years, generally speaking, in terms of the framework. We knew that, for these two years, exceptional spending would be required in terms of the pandemic, and an exceptional deficit. Over the lifetime of the Government, as part of the programme for Government, we have said we will ease our way through to a balanced fiscal position over the next five years. That is the trajectory the Ministers presented to us. They will be doing more work on that before the publication of the summer economic statement.

On the question about 40,000 homes, the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage is preparing the Housing for All strategy. We obviously lost a lot of houses last year and this year. Over the next ten years, we will have to build up. The Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI, has referred to 33,000 houses. Given that we lost 5,000 houses in 2020 and 6,000 or 7,000 in 2021, we need to make that up for the remainder of the decade.

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