Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Government will continue to assess evolving need in terms of medium- and long-term targets. There will be a full assessment in the context of updating those targets. What we are absolutely focused on is increasing delivery and capacity and making a real difference. We are not in any way taking the foot off the throttle in doing as much as possible regarding new housing supply. While the targets will be adjusted, we are going as fast as we can in ramping up delivery.

The Deputy mentioned the CSO dwellings completions for quarter 1 of 2024. This reflects the fact that this Government is making a real impact in increasing delivery. The challenge is that we would love to increase it more quickly, but we are delivering it as fast as we possibly can. We are taking any interventions we can take to increase supply. The Deputy will have seen from the results to which she referred that there were 5,841 new home completions in quarter 1 of this year. In addition, there were 33,000 new home completions in 2023. That was the highest number in 15 years and it exceeded the Housing for All strategy target of 29,000. Even though the target for last year was 29,000, by pushing as hard as we could we hit 33,000. New commencements this year are significantly up on what they would have been last year. We have also seen the highest level of annual completion since we started keeping records in 2011. That is a reflection of the effort and momentum the Government is seeking to build. Over the four years since the Government took office in 2020, 107,000 houses have been built. That is more houses than were built in the nine years before that. Through the social housing programme, more than 12,000 new homes were built last year. That represents the highest delivery for social housing since the mid-1970s. Again, that is a reflection of how the Government is putting in every resource and bringing every tool possible to the table in order to increase delivery as quickly as possible and bring supply into the system. This is what will deliver new homes for families and address the many challenges in the system.

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