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

-----but in my time in office, we have quadrupled the number of new homes being built and the figure has doubled since I became Taoiseach the first time. We will do a lot more. To take social housing as an example, the Government has often been unfairly criticised for overreliance on the private market. In the past couple of years, we have seen the biggest expansion in social housing since the 1970s. One of the most interesting aspects of the census figures that came out only a few weeks ago was not just the raw numbers but that the percentage of people living in social housing has gone up in the past ten years, not down. That totally demolishes the claims of the left with regard to this Government's approach to social housing. The numbers of families living in social housing is up, in raw numbers, by about 40,000, I think. The percentage of people living in social housing had gone up in the past ten years, not down. We need to increase that further because, in my view, the amount of social and public housing should be closer to 20%.

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