But for all his reliance on digits, he can be frustratingly short on detail.

On Wednesday this week, he met with the chief executives of the 31 local authorities at the latest summit on the housing crisis — the sixth held since the first one was sparked by the death of homeless man Jonathan Corrie in a doorway just metres from the Dáil gates in December 2014.

Simultaneously, Mr Murphy published a progress report on social housing, listing the State’s achievements in 2018. One would have informed the other, one would have thought.

But when the minister appeared on RTÉ Radio yesterday morning, his presentation of the figures did not add up.

His report stated that 8,422 new homes were added to the social housing stock in 2018, almost double the number in 2017 or a “dramatic increase” as the minister characterised it yesterday.

He was asked how many were built by local authorities, which is the method preferred by the majority of housing campaigners and homeless charities because it means the homes are publicly-owned, publicly-managed, and potentially more cost-effective.

Mr Murphy said he didn’t know but that this wasn’t the important point — the 8,422 was where the focus should be.

It was eight times greater than the number built in 2015, the year before the Rebuilding Ireland social housing delivery initiative was launched, he repeated breathlessly.

Eight times greater and four years back was a bit much for that hour of the morning but he was swiftly dragged back on track and it was put to him that his own report put the figure for local authority builds at 2,022.

“That could be correct,” he replied.

This morning I had a lively discussion on ⁦@morningireland⁩ about the recent developments in the housing sector and how increasing supply of housing for all sectors of society continues to be my main priority. pic.twitter.com/9OPpDkjeP1

— Eoghan Murphy (@MurphyEoghan) February 14, 2019

He had only met the CEOs the previous day and his department was still in the process of confirming the figures they supplied, he explained, injecting all sorts of uncertainty into the equation.

Presuming the figure of 2,022 is there or thereabouts and no local authority is found to be secretly building the next Milton Keynes as a surprise, there are still issues with the number of 8,422 to which it contributes.

The report says that a further 1,388 homes were built by Approved Housing Bodies, the non-profit home building and management organisations, while another 841 came about through the Part V mechanism where private developers make a portion of their site or dwellings available for social housing.

That makes up 4,251 newly-built, previously non-existent homes — not the “dramatic increase” of 8,422 that the minister wanted to focus on.

That figure was reached partly by including some 2,610 acquisitions — arguably the next best thing to building — although buying from the private sector always brings with it questions about value for money.

But another 1,001 of the 8,422 were leased and while the leases are generally classified as long term, ie, 10-25 years, 10-30 years, or 25-30 years depending on which part of the minister’s report and his own comments you rely on, leasing is not owning.

One issue here is that even 30 years is not actually that long in the lifetime of a family but, also, the properties do not belong to the local authority or to the State and questions around value for money arise again.

The remaining 560 were voids — homes that already existed but had become vacant and then fallen out of use because significant repairs needed to be carried out.

While their return to occupation is welcome, it seems a stretch to classify them as a successful new addition to the housing stock, particularly as they symbolise a failure in social housing management by being allowed to fall out of use in the first place.

Leaving aside the leases and voids, it might be more accurate to say that 6,861 new homes were added to the permanent social housing stock in 2018 — still a good increase on 2017 when the equivalent was 4,511, just not as dramatic as the minister said.

And it is nowhere near what is needed.

More than 100,000 households are on social housing waiting lists or receiving State help to pay their rent, chiefly through the Housing Assistance Payment (HAP) scheme but also the Rental Accommodation Scheme (RAS).

More than 70,000 are officially classified as being on the waiting list but the reality is that the remainder are also in need of social housing as, by the State’s own admission in approving them for HAP or RAS, they can not afford private rents.

Almost 10,000 people are the most homeless of the homeless, living day-to-day in emergency accommodation.

So even by granting the greatest of mathematical generosity to the minister and allowing him his figure of 8,422 new additions to the social housing stock, the gap between what he is achieving and what is needed is vast.

His timeframe for sorting the problem is 2021 as set out under the Rebuilding Ireland initiative launched in 2016.

The plan is to provide 50,000 new social housing homes by 2021 through building, leasing, and buying] and also to have 87,000 households supported in the private rental sector through HAP and RAS.

He says he is on schedule with the new additions — with a total of 21,231 new social housing homes in place or 42% of the target — and ahead on HAP and RAS with 51,000 of a planned 87,000 or 58% of the target achieved.

The fact that HAP is costing €400m a year — money going into the private rental sector for often short-term, insecure tenancies which is just the sort of scenario that exacerbates the homeless crisis — makes it hard to view that as an achievement but that’s another day’s row.

In the meantime, we still don’t know — although the minister says we will do today or on Monday — which local authorities are achieving which part of the targets through which mechanisms.

These are important details if we are to track progress, tackle obstacles, and identify the best routes to successfully providing social housing.

Rebuilding Ireland has numerous different initiatives; the Local Infrastructure Housing Activation Fund, the Rebuilding Ireland Home Loan, and Home Building Finance Ireland are just some of the ones that involve multimillion-euro investments.

If their outcomes are to be assessed with speed and certainty so that they can be tweaked, discontinued, or boosted as warranted, we’re going to need clear, timely, no-spin numbers.

At the moment, we’re in a dust storm of figures and the minister just keeps stamping his feet.