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

Housing is my priority and is a priority for the whole of the Government. I can absolutely guarantee that. We appreciate that the country is in the middle of a very deep housing crisis, a housing emergency that affects people in lots of different ways, including younger people and not-so-young people struggling to buy their first home, people paying high rents and people who are experiencing homelessness. It affects people in all sorts of different ways. The numbers that were published yesterday show real progress. Some 20,000 families and households were provided with social housing of some form last year. Their housing needs are being met. Another 10,000 homes were added to the social housing stock, of which about 7,500 were new builds. We have not built that many new social homes in Ireland in any year since 1975. That is a huge achievement and one on which we intend to build. Compare that, for example, with the last year in which there was a Sinn Féin housing minister in Northern Ireland, when they built less than 2,000 new social houses. Compare the records of the ministers and there can be no doubt that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael housing ministers build more social housing than Sinn Féin ones, even adjusted for population. That is very clear now. That is a fact and it is one I do not think the Deputy can get away from.

On the temporary winter eviction ban, as I and the Government have always said, it was a temporary winter eviction ban. That is something that exists in quite a number of countries in Europe for the winter period. It has ended, as we said it would, on 31 March. We believe Sinn Féin's proposal to extend it would make the situation worse. All that will happen is the number of notices of termination will build up and up and there will be fewer and fewer homes available. There will be then more people chasing fewer homes when the ban is ended. It is a policy that would make things worse. The Deputy may disagree and that is fine but that is our view and I think it is one that makes a lot of sense.

With regard to people who are facing losing their homes in the weeks and months ahead, to answer the Deputy's question as to where they will go, there are various solutions. I have answered this question every week now for five or six weeks. Different people face different circumstances and there is no one solution that fits all. One possibility, for example, is a new HAP tenancy. Thousands of new HAP tenancies have been created so far this year. Another option is social housing. We are building more social housing a year than we have for a very long number of years now. Another option is the tenant in situ scheme, where local authorities will buy the house off the landlord. There are about 1,000 of those transactions or purchases now in progress, up from a very small number a few weeks ago. In some cases the cost-rental backstop is there. In the very rare number of cases where it is required, emergency accommodation is available as a backstop but not as a solution.

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