Is it not time to simply admit that the Minister, Deputy Coveney's Rebuilding Ireland plan is a total and abject failure that has failed utterly to deal with the escalating housing and homeless emergency? For over a year now, the Government has been talking about this plan as a panacea for the crisis yet day by day, the situation gets worse not better. Today we have highlighted that we have reached a shocking and unprecedented level of 7,100 people in emergency accommodation, including 2,500 children. The housing assistance payment limits, which the Government has put in place and which are a central pillar of its entire so-called solution to the housing crisis, are grossly inadequate for the extortionate rents that are now being charged. In my area and in the whole of south Dublin, there is one one-bedroom apartment within the limits.

There are two two-bedroom residential units within the limits today. That comes against the background of an absolutely disastrous crisis.

To add further insult to all of that, the Government has flogged or allowed to be sold via NAMA and the banks we bailed out vast amounts of property and building land where these companies, which make extortionate profits and pay no tax on them, can jack up rents and make people homeless. In my own area, just before Christmas, on 23 December, a vulture fund that bought an apartment block put up rents in the entire block by up to 175%. That was on the day the legislation was supposed to come into force. The vulture funds doing this are paying no tax. Last year, Cerberus had €77 million in profits but paid €1,900 in tax. Lone Star paid $34.6 million in dividends to shareholders abroad.

The Government has allowed that to happen and its policy has actively facilitated it but now it plans to worsen the issue by selling two thirds of public land in key sites such as Shanganagh Castle in Shankill in my own area, the Oscar Traynor Road site and other publicly owned sites. It will sell virtually the whole of the Irish Glass Bottle site or Cherrywood via NAMA and we will only get 10% back on sites. Will the Minister stop this? Will he stop digging the hole that is causing such misery for people suffering from the housing crisis?

I call the Minister.

Will the Government change tack?

As I indicated to Deputy Lisa Chambers, this problem requires a short, medium and long-term solution. The Minister has introduced a strategy that is barely six months old and it is already having an impact. The first step was to increase emergency accommodation. There are 250 extra beds and 2,000 emergency beds in Dublin. We have had to step up the provision for emergency accommodation but it is very much an interim measure. The Deputy knows that the programme commits that by the middle of this year, there will no longer be families in bed and breakfast-type accommodation. There is a very clear commitment and although there is a transition, we are moving on.

The Minister has also dealt with the point of rent certainty. We now have in place caps on rents in Dublin and Cork that will later extend to additional areas. Most important, the Minister has committed to a supply line that we have not had for public housing. As I indicated to Deputy Chambers, there will be 47,000 social homes. We are also extending the housing assistance payment, HAP, which despite the suggestions from one source today accommodated 12,000 families last year. This is working and the HAP homeless element accommodated 550 families in Dublin. This is working but we must continually roll it out. It will be extended, as the Deputy knows, in March.

With sites such as the one at Oscar Traynor Road in my constituency, under the Minister's plan, that site, which has been derelict for 40 years in public ownership, will be built upon. We will have affordable rental homes, social homes, starter homes and a variety of houses supplied to the market to meet the huge needs we all know about. The alternative strategy of sitting on our hands, as we have done for 40 years, and the site has been derelict for that time, is not a solution to the housing crisis. We are moving to get building happening. There is a welcome rise in housing starts in Dublin and we need to build on that. The Minister's strategy is committed to that approach.

The facts speak for themselves. The number of people in homeless accommodation has increased by 91% in the past two years and 34% in the past year since this Government came to office. How the Minister can possibly claim it is working is beyond me.

There is the issue of the disposal of sites like those on Oscar Traynor Road, Shanganagh in Shankill or the NAMA sites in Cherrywood and so on. If these are given to private developers, how will they be affordable? They will not. The Government has not defined affordable housing. Public housing is affordable but sites that previously would have seen 100% public housing will now only have one third with public housing, with the rest controlled by the private sector. They will control the rents or property prices, which will not be affordable.

That is not true.

It is true. It is a fact. What does the Minister say about the Irish Glass Bottle site? Only 10% of that site - a NAMA site for which this country paid a bitter price - will be social housing. Why is it not 100% social housing?

Thank you, Deputy.

In my area there is talk about provision.

I call the Minister.

We had 290 extra so-called social units but there were only 74 real new units while 560 extra people joined the list. That means twice as many people joined the list as units provided.

Deputy, others will want an opportunity to speak later.

Deputy Boyd Barrett wants to cling to some ideological position about how we should solve the housing crisis. It will not be solved by 100% social building. That will not happen. Getting the 47,000 units will take time.

We have been hearing that for a long time.

Let us be absolutely honest.

It is a good policy. Mixed housing is good.

We need mixed housing and on those sites there will be social homes with a differential or traditional local authority rent and those with affordable rent of 70% of commercial market rate. That is designed to be affordable for families and not just those on housing lists. It will apply to another tranche of many families who are finding it increasingly difficult to get housing. The affordable rent is directly targeting a group that needs support and the remainder will be private housing. We need to see private housing develop because many families aspire to home ownership and a starter home built on public lands will provide more affordable access for them than any of the alternatives. It is a creative solution to a challenge and I commend the Minister for it.

The Minister is clinging to a failure.