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

I acknowledge, as does everyone on this side of the House and all three parties in government - we are a three-party Government - we are facing a very serious housing crisis, indeed a housing emergency, that is affecting people in all sorts of different ways, whether it is people having to pay very high rents, people who are experiencing homelessness or people struggling to find their first place to buy in order to get on the housing ladder, to use that term.

We have a housing deficit of probably around 250,000 units. There are many reasons as to why that is the case. I am happy to explore those with the Deputy at another time, or later in this debate, if she wishes. Most people acknowledge that we have, for many different reasons, a very major housing deficit in this country of probably 250,000 homes. We have a mountain to climb but we are climbing that mountain step by step. The Deputy mentioned many different years in her contribution. I will mention four years: 2022, 2023, 1975 and 2007. I will explain why I picked those years. In 2022, 30,000 new homes were built in this country, which is the highest since 2007. That is our housing policy going right. More homes were built last year than any year in the past 15. In 2022, and figures will be confirmed in a few weeks' time, roughly 8,000 new social houses were built in this State, which is more than any year since 1975. That is more than in my lifetime or the Deputy's. No Government has been more committed to social housing in the Deputy's lifetime or mine. The final date, January 2023, was the year we had more first-time buyers buying their first home than any year since records began in 2010. Surely, that is something the Deputy can acknowledge is progress. More young people are buying their first home in January 2023 than any year since we started counting those figures in 2010. Will the Deputy at least acknowledge that some progress is being made?

See this speech in context