Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

For the first time, the Taoiseach and, by extension, the Government have openly accepted that they have missed their targets. I suppose that is progress of some sort. The fact remains that the Taoiseach deliberately and repeatedly used a figure of 40,000 new homes for 2024 when he has to have known that this was not going to be delivered. He cites Deutsche Bank but he knows that by the final quarter, the CSO, ESRI, the Central Bank itself, all of that data reflected that 40,000 was always fictitious. It was never realisable, yet the parties of Government, the Taoiseach and Deputy Simon Harris in particular, insisted on repeating a falsehood of 40,000 again and again. This was specifically to dodge the very necessary debate around the "how" of delivery. Could the Taoiseach go a bit further and make it explicit that the figure of 40,000 was wrong and was not delivered in 2024? Could he express, even, some regret for using that figure in the course of the election?

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