Northern Ireland Dail Éireann — 2023-03-08 ============================================================ Leo Varadkar (FG), Dublin West My office has asked me to make a correction regarding an answer I gave earlier on. I think I said that, north of the Border, about 2,000 social homes had been built. That was incorrect – I was overgenerous. In 2021, it was 763. In 2022, it was 1,356 against 8,000 here. I remember Deputy McDonald was asked in an interview – I think it was on "The Late Late Show" – what her solution to the housing crisis would be, and she answered, or rather quipped, that the Irish were good at building houses. It is pretty clear that Sinn Féin in government is not. It has been a very poor performance by Sinn Féin, which had the finance minister and the housing minister during that period. There are people who believe the housing crisis could not get worse. It could. Sinn Féin cannot build houses, would tax landlords and would take away the help to buy scheme from first-time buyers. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2023-03-08/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:51:40+00:00 Sitting date: 2023-03-08