Holly Cairns (Cork South West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I respect the Deputy but I ask her to please not misrepresent my position at all. I never, ever said anywhere that there would be 50,000 homes built this year. Let us not try to create a rift where one does not exist. What I said very clearly is that this country needs to build 250,000 new homes between 2025 and 2030. It does, by the way. The Construction Industry Federation, which has many members involved in building the houses, believes that is eminently doable. I have told the House this afternoon that we have seen 29,000 houses go to construction this year so far, and we have just started the month of May. There are reasons to be hopeful in relation to housing supply, and I absolutely stand by and double down that we will need to lift the scale of ambition in the second half of this decade. There is a very clear process that all three parties in government agree with. We will publish a draft national planning framework in the month of June that will set out indicative headline numbers. That will go out to consultation.

A finalised breakdown and composition of those numbers will be published in the autumn. There is no broken promise in relation to the phasing out of long-term leasing. The exact commitment the Government has consistently given is that it will end by the end of 2025.

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