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

The Minister and his colleagues need to be dealing with it with more urgency and ambition precisely because of that shortfall and because there is a cumulative impact to inaction and falling short of targets. The longer targets are left unmet or too low, the more difficult it is to play catch-up. That is what we are hearing from the construction industry, which is trying to build but has so many different obstacles in its way. Housing targets that are revised upwards really make a difference by setting out the level of ambition and emergency needed. The Minister has spoken about emergency accommodation and people moving out of that. The problem is so many families are moving into it just as the Government is moving people out. The tenant in situ scheme is simply ineffective for far too many families I hear from. We hear now that regulation of short-term letting, which was promised, will not be delivered. I ask the Minister again, in the dying days of the Government, to set out what he will do on revised housing targets to ensure better delivery.

See this speech in context