Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

We have repeatedly said there is an over-reliance on the private sector and there has to be a scaling-up of the public sector. A briefing note prepared for the Minister, Deputy Donohoe, in December stated that the reliance on the private sector delivery is a vulnerability for 2023. When it comes to social homes, 2,706 new-build social homes were delivered at the end of September.

More than 70% had been acquired by the private sector. I repeatedly see in my area that when a housing estate is built, the council buys a number of the houses or, worse, takes a long lease, which is very poor value for money. We had capital underspend of €1 billion last year. We are certainly not seeing the scaling up of direct building by the State, which has been talked about.

Some of the comments made about the State's response have been fact-checked by The Journalin an article published a couple of months. This challenges much of what is being said about the numbers delivered.

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