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

I thank the Deputy for her question. I start by acknowledging the presence of a large number of third year students from CBS Portlaoise who are in the Visitors Gallery. They are most welcome.

The Deputy mentioned evidence relating to the housing crisis in her introductory remarks. There is real evidence today of the kind of progress we are now making when it comes to housing, released by the CSO in the past couple of hours. We know the number of new homes built in the first quarter of the year is up nearly 20% on the first quarter of last year, with 6,760 new homes built in the first three months of this year alone. A 20% increase in new homes being built this quarter compared with last quarter is something that even somebody as mean-spirited as the Deputy should be able to acknowledge and I hope she will do so in her follow-up remarks.

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