In hard hats and high-vis jackets, Taoiseach Micheál Martin, Tánaiste Simon Harris and Minister for Housing James Browne looked the part at Thursday’s launch of “Delivering Homes, Building Communities, 2025-2030″, the Government’s latest grand plan to tackle the housing crisis.

By 2030, it is committed to delivering 300,000 new homes. It’s an ambitious target.

But who is going to build these new homes and how can that target be met given successive governments’ failure to meet far more modest goals?

Will private developers be tempted to ramp up the delivery of apartment schemes? And given the acute skills shortage in the construction industry, where will the builders – the real hard-hat wearers – come from? And what about Ireland’s creaking infrastructure - the water and electricity needed to make building possible?

The shame of record-breaking homelessness figures means a move to solve this aspect of the housing crisis is a key plank of the new plan.

Irish Times Political Correspondent Ellen Coyne was at the plan’s launch. She joins In The News to discuss these issues.

Presented by Bernice Harrison. Produced by John Casey and Andrew McNair. 

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