The draft Programme for Government commits to deliver 50,000 social homes over the next five years. The document promises to have an emphasis on “new builds”. Fianna Fáil, in particular, wants to see a move away from the purchase of private homes for social housing supply. To assess whether this 10,000 new build target is credible, we first need to know how many social homes were built by the state in 2019. You would think that this is a relatively easy question to answer. Unfortunately not.  In May, the Department of Housing published two important documents within which the answer…