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

If we are going to solve the housing crisis, we need to maximise the amount of public housing we build and we also need to maximise the amount of private housing we build. It is not an either-or situation. Only in the past few weeks, we announced increased investment for local authorities to provide more social housing and to purchase houses off landlords who are selling up, therefore making it social housing.

We only announced that a few weeks ago. What we have announced today is increased grants for people who bring vacant and derelict properties back into use and a temporary waiver of development levies to bring down the cost of construction. All those measures together make sense. It is not what the Opposition thinks: public versus private-----

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