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

I thank the Deputy for her constructive question. To repeat, I thank the commission for the work it has done. The report was in preparation for three years to take a long-term view of housing. It looked back at ten years of significant undersupply and at affordable and social housing. Many of its recommendations have already been implemented. An example is the 20% provision of social and affordable housing, which I changed. I reversed the decision of a previous Labour Party Minister to go from 20% to 10%. We have gone back to 20%.

Having said that, to answer the Deputy's question directly regarding revised targets, I have always said we would publish revised targets once we had the work of the Housing Commission, which we have now, and assessed it properly and the work of the ESRI. It will be this autumn. Any target we have set heretofore was a floor, not a ceiling. In the first two years of Housing for All, we exceeded our targets substantially. Since this Government came into office, we have delivered, up to quarter 1 this year, 110,000 new homes. That does not take into account the vacant homes brought back into use. There is social housing at a rate not seen for 50 years. There are affordable homes for the first time in a generation and cost rental, which the Deputy and her Labour Party colleagues support, which I welcome, is now ramping up at scale. It is a new form of housing tenure.

Of course we need to do more and I have always been ambitious beyond our targets. I think the Deputy would agree that for any government, be it this Government or any future government, any target set must be based on critical analysis. We have the Housing Commission report now, which I have published in full. Many of those matters, like the shared equity scheme and supports for first-time buyers, which I tried to address when speaking to the previous Deputy, have been called for by the commission, particularly around the Affordable Housing Act, on which the commission said it wants me to stick with it and we need consistency. There are other elements which I will of course examine in detail. I have had the report for just 14 days. I received it on 8 May. The report deserves more than 14 days of consideration after the commission spent nearly three years doing the work.

I have always said, prior to this report, that we could come forward with revised housing targets for the remainder of this decade in the autumn of this year. I intend to do that. In the meantime, we are ramping up delivery this year. Last month alone, 18,000 new homes were commenced in one month alone, breaking all records. We have a significant target this year of more than 34,500. I intend for us to exceed that substantially this year.

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