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

More than 1,000 young people and couples a month now buy their first home. Of course, we have new forms of public housing that are now becoming a reality, such as cost rental, for example.

As regards the social housing target, the Deputy is correct that we missed it last year. Some 6,500 new social homes were provided. What the Deputy did not acknowledge - she should have done so, frankly, to be fair - in her question is that was still the highest number of new social homes provided in Ireland for a very long time. We do not know how long. It might have been the highest since the foundation of the State. I know people talk nostalgically about the 1920s when the Free State built a lot of social housing, or about the 1940s, the 1950s, the 1970s and the 1980s. We cannot find on record a year in which more new social housing was provided by the Government in its many forms than last year. We are not happy with it either. We want it to be much higher this year - closer to 9,000 or 10,000. That is our objective.

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