Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

As the Deputy knows, the ESRI report is based on children born in 2008 and assesses them over a nine-year period. Without question, quality of housing impacts on the well-being of children and families. That is why we are building more social housing this year and the past three years. This Government has, notwithstanding Covid-19 lockdowns, substantially changed the dial in respect of house completions. We have also done far more than any other Government in retrofitting of local authority housing to make the quality of housing better and also retrofitting more generally. There has been a dramatic increase in the retrofitting of houses across the country, which goes to the heart of the ESRI report, with better quality housing in the rental market, local authority housing and housing more generally. That is the way to deal with it. Without doubt, since 2020, post Covid, there has been a dramatic increase. An additional 110,000 houses have been delivered but we need to do much more.

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