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

The Deputy will see the new targets in the early New Year. We will take account of Dr. Lyons's research and the advice of the Housing Commission. We will also take account of other work being done the ESRI and we will increase the housing targets in the new year. However, we need to be realistic. Housing construction can only be scaled up so quickly. We definitely do not want to cut corners or go back to jerry-built houses and apartments like we had during the Celtic Tiger period.

We have gone from 7,000 new homes in 2011 to double that, 14,000 new homes, in 2017, and it looks like it will be more than 30,000 this year. That is a fourfold increase in the number of new homes being built since 2011. This is very significant, but we will need to go much higher than 30,000 per year.

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