Colm Burke (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

My colleague on the opposite side of the House raised the issue of housing. The Central Statistics Office, CSO, has released figures today for house and apartment completions in the first quarter of 2019. The total number is 4,275.This is very welcome news. It shows that every effort is being made by the Government to encourage the building of new houses and apartments, as well as making money available to all local authorities to build social housing. The target this year is 10,000 social housing units, whether apartments or houses. I hope that target will be reached, in addition to the numbers of houses and apartments that will be completed in the private sector. New house and apartment purchasers have challenges. Therefore, we need to constantly review the procedures for making loan applications. In the next two or three months we will need to see how we can further assist those who are paying high rents and trying to save and who will find, when they believe they have put a deposit together, that the goalposts have moved. It is important that people be allowed to forward-plan and get into the housing market at the earliest possible opportunity once they have established that they have the capacity to do so which they already do by virtue of the rents they are paying.