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

-----and discuss those issues with them. On the housing issue, if I could comment for a moment, there were several projections throughout 2024 in respect of completions. We have exceeded targets, particularly in 2022 and 2023. We exceeded Central Bank targets and other targets that suggested we would come in lower. That is the position. The first quarter of the following year is when the statistics come in. There are a variety of publications and data was published in September by the Central Bank and others, but the Central Bank had come in lower in previous years. The Deputy knows that EY-Euroconstruct and others were predicting far higher numbers. It was extremely disappointing that we did not make those targets in 2024. The overall Housing for All targets were exceeded in that three-year period, but that is not enough. We have to build more houses and we have to build them faster. The focus has to be on how we do that and how we get from 30,000 plus houses a year being built to 50,000 houses a year being built. I have yet to hear anything credible from the Deputy in respect of that challenge. When people make suggestions, as I have, in terms of the need for more private sector investment to go into housing, they get attacked in a knee-jerk fashion without any space or room for a meaningful or substantive debate on the issues or the modalities by which we can get 50,000 houses built a year. This is what the ESRI is saying we need in terms of demographic pressures. In other words, our population is increasing and more and more houses will need to be built.

All the parties in this House agree on the demand side of the targets. I do not think there is big disagreement as to whether it is 50,000 or a variation of that which we require per annum over the next five years. We have a clear programme in terms of Government investment, which is the largest historically. We built more houses in the past three years than since the early 2000s. We built more social housing in the past three years, You would have to go back to the 1970s to get the same scale of social housing new builds in this country, as well as provision. We will continue to focus on that in terms of the delivery of social and affordable housing. We also need to get more private sector investment involved.

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