The Taoiseach has insisted he is doing enough to slash social housing waiting lists – and laid the blame for the situation on the Opposition.
In an interview with Dublin Live, Leo Varadkar boasted his party is tackling the crisis, which he claimed was caused by Fianna Fail.
Speaking at his office in Government Buildings, the Taoiseach said: “What we are now well into is the biggest social housing programme in a very long time.”
And he ruled out the possibility of shifting the under-fire Housing Minister to a different brief in a Cabinet reshuffle.
Asked if he still had confidence in Eoghan Murphy’s ability, he gave a short and direct response: “Yes.”
Mr Varadkar insisted the Government inherited a broken system and it will take more time to solve the crisis.
He added: “If you take the last year Fianna Fail was in power – 2010, before we came into office – only 3,000 social houses were provided in the country. This year it’s 10,000.
“The idea we were going to rebuild that overnight was impossible.
“We spent the first five years in Government getting the country working again and balancing the books. We really only had the last two years to get building again and we are building again.”
But Mr Varadkar admitted this is not enough to match demand.
He said: “It’s not but we are getting there. What happened is because of the crash, because the country went bust, the construction industry collapsed so the banks couldn’t lend anymore. We literally had a few years where almost no social houses were built – it was a couple of hundred or maybe 1,000.
“We’re now up to around 10,000 and it will be 12,000 this year.
“Now it’s a mix. Most of that is local authorities and housing bodies, you know people like Peter McVerry Trust and so on, with Government money, building housing.
“Some of it is houses that are built and bought off the developers and brought into social housing stock. We found with the councils in particular and also the housing trusts and housing bodies that because they haven’t been in the business of building houses for so long, they had to rebuild the capacity to do it.”
However, campaigner Peter McVerry insisted the most vulnerable in society can’t wait any longer.
He said: “We are constantly soothed and reassured by propaganda and spin from the minister and the department that ‘the plan is working’.
“Considering homeless figures are 66% higher than when Rebuilding Ireland was launched in July 2016 and have been over 10,000 since February, the plan is not working.
“It is time for the Government to act by solving the homeless and housing crisis through the provision of publicly-owned social housing rather than the best interests of investors and financial interests.”
