Eoghan Murphy, the housing minister, and Leo Varadkar were “not even treading water” on the issue of homelessness, Fianna Fáil said

Leo Varadkar has been accused of being “detached from reality” for suggesting the housing supply crisis may have stabilised over the past year.

The taoiseach said that the problem was the biggest challenge his government faced in 2018 but that he hoped the increase in the number of people becoming homeless was stemmed.

“I hope we’ll look back on 2018 as the year in which the number of people homeless and in emergency accommodation stabilised and [that] 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,” he said.

According to the Department of Housing there were 9,968 homeless people in