I do not agree that the Dáil should adjourn after Topical Issues. It is essential that the Government comes in, provides us with an explanation today and provides time for a debate on what the Simon Community reports this morning on the eve of Christmas, which is the shocking fact that 5,000 people are in emergency accommodation, including, scandalously, 1,500 children. What a shameful legacy the Tánaiste leaves as leader of the Labour Party as her term of government winds torturously to its end. This is what our people are enduring after five years of the Government.

Does the Deputy wish to have a debate on this issue?

We need an explanation from the Government about the shocking fact of homelessness and people in emergency accommodation and, in particular, why the Labour Party, which undertook to fight for those who are in this situation, has failed so dismally. If statues in this Chamber could weep, that of James Connolly, which is behind my shoulder, would shed tears of anger and indignation that any party that still dares to call itself "Labour" would preside over such an incredible situation of suffering, while handing an essential human need to developers, vulture funds and profiteering landlords.

I want the Government to account today for its failure.

Is the Deputy taking a pension when he goes?

We are having a brief discussion.

We have discussed this issue in this House on many occasions. We promised that 1,000 voided apartments and houses, most of them in Dublin city and county, would be given to people by the end of this year. I am pleased to tell the House that the number of voided apartments and houses given to families is 3,500. In addition, local authorities, particularly in the Dublin region, including in my area and Deputy Joe Higgins’s area, have bought up to 1,000 properties in which to house families. I am delighted to say that in the past few months families are getting fine new houses built to the highest standards.

It is not enough.

Deputy Joe Higgins, however, does not seem to be aware of this. Through the efforts of the community welfare service and the protocol with Threshold we have housed more than 5,500 families through renting and leasing arrangements.

This is like Leaders' Questions.

Through the housing assistance payment and the county councils that operate it, we have this year housed more than 5,500 families. Unfortunately, many of the Dublin local authorities are not operating it.

This is a Second Stage speech.

They were housed already.

We have a housing problem, but we are making serious inroads into it.

What about the 5,000 on the streets?

That was just an excuse for a rant.

It is the pantomime season.