Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour) | Oireachtas source

No amount of spin can hide the reality, which is that we are just not building enough houses. The Minister's answer acknowledges that.

Construction industry stakeholders themselves point out that without credible targets, we simply will never meet the delivery we need to do for our growing population. We have heard it from across industry, with the Construction Industry Federation confirming over the weekend that there is capacity and a need for up to 60,000 new builds per year.

As I have been hearing from the Taoiseach for months that the Housing for All targets are too low and that they will be revised and updated, I am asking precisely when will we see the new revised targets and whether they will meet that clear level of need of need. This time last year, we in Labour called for 50,000 new builds per year. We also pointed out that we will need to see 50,000 deep retrofit and refurbishments a year to address that vacancy and dereliction crisis that the Minister mentions. Those figures have been borne out by reports from the ESRI, by calls from Sherry Fitzgerald and Dr. Ronan Lyons. How many times does the Government need to be told its targets are not credible currently and will never meet the existing level of need until we adopt credible targets and see a housing plan from the Government that is sufficiently ambitious and urgent to deliver the homes our people so badly need?

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