Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions
Dail Éireann — 2026-01-29
============================================================

Simon Harris (FG), Wicklow

You would swear the number of new houses was down today, based on that. The number of new homes completed last year represents an increase of 20% on the previous year. For the people listening at home - and just in case they missed the bit at the start - there were almost 6,000 homes built last year than the year before. We are now living in a country where 600 first-time buyers are buying their first homes every week. The Deputy talks about people living in box rooms. Yes, there are too many. He talks about hopelessness. It is not hopeless for those 600 people this week who will get the keys to their homes and begin their lives. These are the people I see, right across my community in Wicklow and right across this country as well.
We have completion figures today that show momentum. They are a positive sign. There is now momentum back in the housing market. The Deputy is correct. That did not happen by accident; it happened as a result of the policies that we are pursuing and that are injecting confidence again in an ability to build in the private sector and a realisation across all parts of the State that this housing emergency is the responsibility of all parts of the State to fix. I refer here to Uisce Éireann, the ESB and local authorities, which need to zone more land as opposed to just passing motions condemning the housing situation. The local authorities actually need to help.
Let us be honest. I would say the Deputy was a bit surprised that the figures are as high as they are today. I would not go as far as to say that the Deputy was disappointed, but I would say he was surprised.

---

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/2026-01-29/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:34+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-01-29