TÁNAISTE LEO VARADKAR has said the target he announced yesterday of reaching 40,000 new homes built each year is not government policy, but has been discussed with government colleagues.

The Fine Gael leader set the target of achieving 70% home-ownership at his party’s Ard Fhéis yesterday.

“This will require getting up to forty thousand new homes built every year, double where we are now,” he said.

“This will be done through public and private investment, and we will champion the building of new communities and new homes – social, shared ownership, cost rental, student accommodation, homes to rent and above all, homes to purchase.”

Speaking to Newstalk’s On the Record this morning, the Tánaiste said this target is not government policy.

“Each of the three parties in this government have their own policies, we’re all comfortable with the fact that we have different policies. We’re saying that we need to get up to 40,000 a year, we’ve discussed it at Cabinet sub-committee, but it’s not government policy, this is Fine Gael policy but we will feed that into Housing For All which will be government policy.”

Varadkar said the target for next year is not 40,000, but the aim is to reach 25,000 in 2022.

He said before the pandemic, “we were heading for 25,000 last year and 30,000 this year”.

“I think it’s doable to increase supply by more than 5,000 a year, we have done that under the last government,” he said.

Also speaking this afternoon to RTÉ’s The Week in Politics, Varadkar said the government wants to make sure “we don’t see house prices going back up to the peak they hit 14 years ago”.

“But we do want people to be able to get a mortgage and we’ve a real perversity now in the in the Irish system where we have lots of people who are paying maybe €1,400 or €1,500 in rent every month and they can’t get a mortgage for €1,200.

“They’d actually be better off if they were able to get that mortgage, they’re paying more in rent than they would in a mortgage and that’s because of those Central Bank rules, which are now thankfully under review.”

Varadkar said the State can help improve the level of private stock by not competing with first-time buyers for new builds and instead increasing the amount of social housing that is direct-build. He said the commitment made through the Land Development to focus on social housing and affordable housing should also help.