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

Simon Harris (FG), Wicklow

The ESRI forecast that 35,000 homes would be built. We have exceeded that. The Central Bank of Ireland forecast that 33,500 would be built. We have exceeded that. The Irish Fiscal Advisory Council forecast an assumption for this year of 34,500. We have exceeded that. We need to continue to do much more. The plan that this Government has is to deliver 300,000 homes by the end of 2030. This is a positive contribution towards that. It is a significant increase. If the Deputy looks at the graph, he will see that it was the highest number of housing completions since 2011. The Deputy likes to talk about my party being in government a long time. When I came into the Dáil, there were approximately 7,000 homes completed. Has the Deputy looked at the graph? It is the highest number since 2011. Do we want it to be higher? Of course, we do. There is momentum now, and we have to build on that.
The Deputy and I have different policy views, and I respect that. We debate them and we will continue to do so. However, I suggest that some of the policies that we adopted in the budget we have yet to even see the full potential of because they were obviously introduced later in the year. During the course this year, we will begin to see their impact. That is not just my view. The Deputy will have seen the Bank of Ireland economic analysis published this week and what it is hearing from the market in terms of the positive signs of the decisions that we took.
We will work constructively with anybody in this House. We have seen the number of planning permissions increase significantly. We have seen positivity on commencements, namely a doubling of the number between December and November. More first-time mortgages were approved in the first 11 months of 2025 than every before. There is a housing emergency in this country,. It is an emergency if you do not have a roof over your head or are trying to move out of the box room. However, today's figure represents an increase in housing supply, and that is a good thing.

---

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