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

-----and pitting people who want to buy their home against people on the housing list. We need to help everyone. The plan is Housing for All; it is public and private and involves us doing as much as we can possibly do on both tracks.

I disagree with the Deputy's analysis. Housing for All has had a very good start. More social housing was built last year than in any year since the 1970s. Surely that is significant. We need to do better again this year. The thing that encourages me most is that about 400 people are buying their first homes every week. That is probably an underestimate. I can go into detail on that if the Deputy wishes. We have not seen that since the Celtic tiger period. Surely the Deputy should be welcoming that. Why not acknowledge progress when it is being made? It is fair enough to say that we need to do more or that we need to be quicker about what we are doing. Why try to pretend or gaslight people into thinking that no progress has been made? There is a record level of social housing – the highest since the 1970s. Some 30,000 new homes were built last year, and now we see 400 people buying their first homes each week. Surely this is progress that should be acknowledged.

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