The Taoiseach and his predecessor, Deputy Micheál Martin, repeatedly told this House that housing was the biggest single social issue facing the Government. In his first interview after he assumed the office of Taoiseach, he said we needed to turn the corner on housing with a Covid-style response. He then clarified that what he meant by that was to adopt a can-do attitude. His can-do attitude appeared to evaporate in the Dáil yesterday when he flippantly dismissed concerns in respect of the significant under-delivery of social homes last year. The target for the delivery of new-build social homes last year was 9,000. That was reduced quietly in November to 8,000, and in December the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform warned that just 6,500 were likely to be delivered, nearly 30% below the original target. Even then, the majority of them were purchased from the private sector. When this was raised with the Taoiseach yesterday, he offered no explanation or apology for this gross failure by the Government to deliver on its own targets. He said, "we have not built perhaps as many as we would have liked or as many as we had intended". What is the point in the Government's housing targets? Can the Taoiseach explain that to me? Judging by his comment yesterday, he does not seem to care that the targets for social homes have been missed for three years in a row.

The figures are even worse when it comes to affordable homes. Having delivered zero affordable homes in its first two years, the Government is set to miss last year's target by a whopping 80%. Fewer than 1,000 affordable homes will be delivered out of a modest target of 4,100. Perhaps this should not come as a surprise, given that the Department failed to spend a staggering €1 billion of its capital budget during the biggest housing crisis in the history of the State. The Taoiseach and his predecessor continually claim they are prioritising housing but where is the evidence for that? It cannot be found in the Government repeatedly missing its own targets, the record number of people in homelessness, record rents, record house prices or the record number of adults in their 20s or 30s or even older who are living in childhood bedrooms and cannot afford to move out.

People desperately need hope that the housing disaster can be addressed. The Taoiseach claims it will be addressed using some vague can-do attitude that has apparently been absent from this Government so far, but his record is one of broken promises. Is it any wonder that a new poll carried out by Virgin Media News found that a staggering 92% of young people are worried they will never be able to afford a home?

My questions are simple. What is the point in the Government's modest housing targets when it keeps missing them? Why should anyone believe any of the Government's commitments on housing? Does the Taoiseach really understand the magnitude of this problem?

Of course I understand the magnitude of the problem. I do not think anybody living in this country - certainly nobody who runs for election or gets elected - could not understand the magnitude of the housing crisis we are facing. It is the biggest social issue with which the Government and the country is currently grappling. It affects people in all sorts of different ways, whether it is people who cannot afford to buy their first home, people who are paying massive rents or people in their late 20s or late 30s still living in their childhood bedroom. It affects people in so many different ways and it is holding us back as a country, an economy and a society.

That is why we are determined, as a Government, to turn the corner on the housing crisis as soon as we can. Housing for All is our plan to do that and it is showing results. Our main housing target last year will not just be met; it will be exceeded. We targeted the construction of 25,000 new homes last year. We do not have the numbers in yet but it looks like it will be closer to 28,000, so that main housing target was not only met, it was exceeded last year. Of course, our target for this year is to build approximately 29,000 new homes. I want that to be exceeded this year as well, by the way. We are working really hard to make sure the slowdown in commencements does not result in a slowdown in completions.

The Deputy might not know this but 16,000 people, couples and families bought their first home last year. That was the highest in 16 years. I know it is cold comfort to people who cannot buy a home yet, but the highest number in 15 or 16 years - 16,000 people - is not a small thing to have achieved.

How many people are in the market to buy?

More than 1,000 young people and couples a month now buy their first home. Of course, we have new forms of public housing that are now becoming a reality, such as cost rental, for example.

As regards the social housing target, the Deputy is correct that we missed it last year. Some 6,500 new social homes were provided. What the Deputy did not acknowledge - she should have done so, frankly, to be fair - in her question is that was still the highest number of new social homes provided in Ireland for a very long time. We do not know how long. It might have been the highest since the foundation of the State. I know people talk nostalgically about the 1920s when the Free State built a lot of social housing, or about the 1940s, the 1950s, the 1970s and the 1980s. We cannot find on record a year in which more new social housing was provided by the Government in its many forms than last year. We are not happy with it either. We want it to be much higher this year - closer to 9,000 or 10,000. That is our objective.

We have repeatedly said there is an over-reliance on the private sector and there has to be a scaling-up of the public sector. A briefing note prepared for the Minister, Deputy Donohoe, in December stated that the reliance on the private sector delivery is a vulnerability for 2023. When it comes to social homes, 2,706 new-build social homes were delivered at the end of September.

More than 70% had been acquired by the private sector. I repeatedly see in my area that when a housing estate is built, the council buys a number of the houses or, worse, takes a long lease, which is very poor value for money. We had capital underspend of €1 billion last year. We are certainly not seeing the scaling up of direct building by the State, which has been talked about.

Some of the comments made about the State's response have been fact-checked by The Journal in an article published a couple of months. This challenges much of what is being said about the numbers delivered.

I do not accept the thesis that there is overreliance on the private sector because that implies we should, maybe, have the same number of houses but with more public and fewer private. I have a different view: we need more public housing and more private housing. We need more private housing for people who want to buy and own their first home, which is a social objective we should all get behind. Also, we need more public housing for people who cannot afford to buy their own home. It is not a case of having more or less of either; we need more of both. That is the view of the Government.

I do not accept the argument that we are not scaling up the delivery of public housing by the State. When people study this, they need to acknowledge there is more to the State than local authorities, or councils. For example, the Land Development Agency, LDA, which has about 4,000 homes either under construction or in planning, is a State body. The State funds approved housing bodies, such as the Iveagh Trust, the Peter McVerry Trust, Clúid Housing and other such bodies that we admire, to provide social housing. Anyone talking about public housing in the State who looks only to local authorities is either not fully knowledgeable or disingenuous, because there is more to the State and local authorities.