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

Of course we need to do more for people facing homelessness. It is important to bear in mind that while 12,000 people in emergency accommodation provided by the State are homeless, they are not the same people.

We are lifting people out of homelessness all the time. It is important to bear that in mind, too. Of course, there is more we need to do, but the summer economic statement is essentially a document that deals with fiscal policy. It has a macroeconomic framework; it is not going to get into the details of housing, education, the tax package or the welfare package. That is not what it is about. It is about the headline figures.

The Deputy is right to say that we are experiencing a housing crisis. I have always acknowledged that. That affects people in lots of different ways, whether this is through high rents, rising homelessness or people struggling to buy their first home. However, I do not think it is fair not to acknowledge any of the progress that has been made in recent years, which has been considerable. The Deputy mentioned 12 years ago when her party and my party entered office together. We were only building 7,000 homes per year at that point. It is now more than 30,000. The number of homes being built has quadrupled in 12 years and we aim to go much higher than the 30,000 we achieved last year. House prices are now levelling off. They have been falling in Dublin for the past couple of months. We are seeing some really encouraging signs around home ownership in particular. In the month of May, record numbers of people secured a mortgage for the first time. Some 5,000 new mortgage applications were approved and 3,000 of those were for first-time buyers. Each week we are now seeing 400 or 500 young people, both individuals and couples, buying their first homes. We have not seen anything like that in even 15 or 20 years. That gives me a lot of confidence that we can make homeownership a reality for more people.

That did not happen by accident. It is because of Government policies that increase supply like, for example, planning law reforms and waiving the development levies, as well as schemes, such as the help-to-buy scheme, which help people to get their deposit and the first home scheme, which bridges the gap between the mortgage you get and the property you want to buy. There is huge interest in the grants to do up derelict homes and vacant properties in order to bring them back to use. I think there have been 500 applications alone in County Cork, which is extraordinarily encouraging. There are also, of course, local authority home loans, which people can use to get a mortgage when the banks cannot give them a mortgage. That is all significant progress and none of it happened by accident. It happened because of Government policies, many of which were opposed by Opposition parties. Yes, we accept that we need to do more; more on home ownership, more to bring rents down and to help renters and, of course, more to reduce homelessness.

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