Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Anyone in government who travels and is away is working, and the Deputy knows that. Hers was a pretty cheap shot and one she should not repeat.

I do take responsibility for the work this Government does. I agree with the Deputy on that. We have many more challenges. What I am saying to the Deputy concerns housing delivery across all forms of tenure. Even if she looks at what will happen later on today, she will see that we will publish the commencement figures for August of this year. There were 2,770 new commencements in August, which is 31% up on the previous August. This means that nearly 22,000 homes were commenced this year to date. The highest number of completions were in the first six months of this year too. While it does not suit Sinn Féin to see progress on housing – in fairness to Deputy Bacik's party, I find it more constructive in this regard – we are seeing a sustained pick-up in delivery in many areas, even when we have a difficult funding environment with higher costs.

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