Micheál Martin (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)

The Government is simply saying we are maintaining and increasing public investment in housing from the State, the largest actor in housing right now, while also creating the conditions to facilitate far greater private sector investment in house building and apartment building in particular, which needs to increase. The fundamental way to deal with housing is to increase supply significantly over the next number of years. We have gone from a situation pre-2020 when about 20,000 houses were being built per annum, which was too low, to about 33,000 now. We need to get to 50,000. That will not happen with tinkering or spending a year or two setting up a new State agency, as the Labour Party wants to do.

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