May I begin this morning by letting the parents, family and friends of Karen Buckley know that we are all thinking of them at this horrific time.

Yesterday, the Simon Communities briefed us on the worsening crisis in homelessness. There was apparently a meeting yesterday with Dublin City Council and, to quote one of the Simon staff, one could see the whites of their eyes at the extent of the crisis and the lack of response in terms of short-term measures. The Simon Community has said it has never been as bad in Dublin and that the number of homeless families is at the highest level in our history. There are more than 800 children in emergency hotel and hostel accommodation and I understand that we are beginning to run out of hotel accommodation as well. This whole situation has been made much worse by the cuts the Tánaiste has made to the rent allowance and also by the elimination of the mortgage interest supplement. This comes at a time when rents have risen up to 15% or 20% in urban areas. People are being squeezed out of accommodation because they cannot afford it even when they have employment.

We asked the Tánaiste six months ago to reverse the cuts to rent allowance. If this had been done it would have eased the situation somewhat. Is the Tánaiste aware of the particular difficulties concerning the availability of emergency accommodation, particularly here in Dublin? Will she confirm to the House that she will immediately reverse the cuts to rent allowance and to the rent allowance caps to ensure that people can afford to house themselves?

In respect of the issue of homelessness, it is a very difficult issue in Dublin.

Not only in Dublin.

Many individuals and unfortunately some families with children have been affected by it. As the Deputy knows, before Christmas, in conjunction with all of the agencies and indeed with most of the political parties, the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, Deputy Alan Kelly, moved a series of special measures to deal with the situation which have been very favourably received - initiatives like the night café and the transport arrangements for people who are out on the street.

As regards the budget, the Deputy will remember from when he was in government that his party managed to destroy the building industry through a bubble and the core of the problem now is a build-up of a shortage of houses for different sizes of families and households. Slowly but surely, following what Fianna Fáil did to the building industry and the 330,000 people who lost their jobs as a result of what it did, we are now in a situation where the supply of housing is increasing.

The Deputy is wrong in his reference to rent supplement. If he had been here in the House when I spoke about this on a number of occasions, he would know that we have introduced a protocol in conjunction with organisations like Threshold, Simon and other bodies who are assisting people who have difficulty with housing. What we are doing now is what should have always been done. We are actually dealing with cases on a case-by-case basis because to simply raise and increase all rent levels, as Fianna Fáil seems to be implying, would be to drive up rent levels for people at work and for students enormously. What we are doing under the protocol is providing for negotiated increases for any individual or family in need of help in sustaining their rent supplement.

Since the beginning of this year we have negotiated 4,000 new rent supplement tenancies through the Department of Social Protection. What we have also done is deal at this point in time with a couple of hundred cases of people who came to the community welfare service. I invite people to go to the community welfare service to avail of the protocol so that a detailed arrangement can be put in place. In that respect, the community welfare service officers have total discretion in negotiating higher rents and an agreed rent if that is an appropriate solution for helping people to hold on to a tenancy.

With the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, Deputy Kelly, we are also looking at the issue of seeking to provide levels of rent certainty for tenants renting privately and through rent supplement. The Minister is looking at that at the moment.

I do not want to make this a political football. The issue might be a matter of mirth for the Government benches.

When an organisation such as Simon, which cannot be accused of being political, tells us that this is a crisis beyond a crisis, it is time to stop laughing in the House and to start to take the issue seriously.

What about a few years ago when the Deputy had responsibility for it and did nothing?

Deputy, please.

My apologies, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle.

It is fair to note that the money for rent supplement and mortgage interest supplement has been cut by 43% since 2011. The total allocation for housing this year is €680 million, which is down from the €805 million we provided the year the Tánaiste came into government. That is a cut of €190 million. It is time we realised there is a crisis which will only be resolved by providing accommodation and making it affordable. The Government made the choice in the budget last year to reduce the top rate of tax rather than to deal with a greater, more urgent necessity, which is the homelessness crisis. I ask the Tánaiste what the Government is going to do in the short term for the people who are in emergency accommodation and do not know where they are going to sleep. We will wind up in a situation in which people are sleeping in cars. It seems the Government benches think that is a laughing matter.

It was a laughing matter for you.

You are the laughing matter.

Emergency accommodation is not a permanent solution to anybody's homelessness difficulties. What the Government did before Christmas, to much praise from some of the organisations to which the Deputy has referred, was initiate an emergency response over a number of areas. While that seems to have passed Deputy Ó Cuív by, it has been widely written about as being very successful. However, it is not a long-term solution. The long-term solution to homelessness and housing difficulties is to build more houses. Unfortunately, when Fianna Fáil was in government, it crashed the building industry. We are now slowly rebuilding it to get homes for families and homes for people. Already this year, we have devoted in the budget for 2015 and over the next three years the largest amount ever devoted to a house building programme in the history of the State. The Deputy will know that local authorities all over the country have received significant allocations to build social houses as well as builders in the private sector developing and building affordable houses. While that obviously has passed Fianna Fáil by, it is actually the way to solve the housing crisis.

What we are doing on rent supplement, which the Deputy will remember from his time as a Minister, is providing that when people go back to work, they go off rent supplement. We have now got unemployment down to just 10%. When we came into office, we inherited an unemployment rate of nearly 15% from Fianna Fáil in government. The numbers of people on rent supplement is going down for two reasons: the numbers of people going back to work, which is a great credit to them and a great development and recovery for the country, and because we have developed the housing assistance payment. We are slowly but surely moving very large numbers of people and the budget that goes with that to the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government where the rent supplement of old will be handled by local authorities. The value of that will be that, as with a council house rental, the adult family members involved will not be inhibited from going out to work. We want everybody in the country to be able to get back to work. Thankfully, we are now putting builders back to work. The construction workers whose jobs Fianna Fáil destroyed will build the homes that families need.