Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said he hopes 2018 will be the year the housing crisis “levels off”.
The Government has come under intense scrutiny in the last year as the number of homeless people in Ireland reached the highest in the history of the state.
One in three homeless people in Ireland is a child, and charities say a lack of social housing stocl and rising rents have pushed many young families into homelessness, forcing them to live in family hubs and emergency accommodation.
“Housing was easily the biggest challenge we faced in the year gone by,” Mr Varadkar said.
“We anticipate just under 20,000 new homes have been built in Ireland this year and this is the highest for a decade.
“That doesn’t include student accommodation or ghost estates being brought back into use, it’s pure new-builds.
“We’ll increase the social housing stock by about 8,000, more than half new-builds by councils and approved housing bodies.
“Numbers in emergency accommodation have been in the 9,000 to 10,000 range in the last number of months; I hope we’ll look back in 2018 as the year in which the number of people homeless and in emergency accommodation stabilised and in 2019 is the year in which the number falls.
“But that remains to be seen, a lot of work is still to be done on that to increase the supply of housing in particular.”
Political rivals have taken particular issue with Housing Minister Eoghan Murphy, who survived a no-confidence motion tabled by Sinn Fein in 2018.
The party’s housing spokesman, Eoin O Broin, has said the homeless figures published each month by the Government only include Department of Housing-funded emergency accommodation.
Mr O Broin said the Department of Children and Youth Affairs, through Tusla, also funds emergency and step-down accommodation.
“All in all there are approximately 12,805 people accessing emergency accommodation in this state – far more than the 9,724 currently counted by the Government,” Mr O Broin said.