I wish to also express my deepest sympathy to the O'Brien family for the tragic loss of their three children and their sister in Clondalkin yesterday.

Of the homeless families in Dublin, 60% have been in emergency accommodation for more than six months and 40% have been in bed and breakfasts, hostels or hotels for over one year. There are 138 families who have spent more than 18 months in emergency accommodation and 40 families have now entered their third year of homelessness. Many of these families are living in inappropriate, unsuitable and insecure accommodation. As the Tánaiste knows, the number of complaints about the accommodation has doubled. Families are being forced into accommodation with damp rooms, blood-stained sheets, mice and even cockroaches. Can the Tánaiste, or any Member, imagine living with young children in these conditions for this length of time? Some of the 2,500 homeless children have spent more of their lives in emergency accommodation than in a stable home. Meanwhile some 198,000 homes lie vacant across the State. In Dublin, 40,000 homes are empty, which is almost 40 houses for every homeless family. This is not new information because we have known about it since the 2011 census, the same year the Tánaiste took office. Yet for five years during which the previous Government was in office, the Tánaiste did nothing to bring these homes back into use. That is why 1,200 families and 2,500 children are sleeping in emergency accommodation. It is also why there are 100,000 households languishing on the councils' waiting lists and why thousands of families who are facing home repossessions or spiralling rents are now at risk of homelessness.

The Government has started to take some action but the plans are not ambitious enough. They are chronically underfunded and they will not meet their targets. The Peter McVerry Trust is hosting a vacant homes conference today. The trust has nine policy recommendations it wants the Government to include in the upcoming vacant homes plan. The Simon Community has published a ten-point plan to tackle the unacceptable number of vacant units. Both of these groups are urging Government to do more to get empty homes back into use. My questions to the Tánaiste are very simple. Will she commit to studying carefully the recommendations of those two organisations? More importantly, will she commit to publishing a vacant homes plan that is ambitious and properly funded to provide the homes so desperately needed by those families in emergency accommodation and by those at risk of homelessness?

The Government plans are ambitious and funded. The Government recognises the significant challenges facing the housing market in Ireland. That is why we brought forward Rebuilding Ireland - Action Plan for Housing and Homelessness, which sets out a very practical and absolutely readily implementable set of time-based actions. This is what we are actually doing. It is a plan that will deliver for people by addressing the shortage of affordable housing, rising rents and the unacceptable high levels of homelessness. The reason we need to have Rebuilding Ireland is because of the disastrous and catastrophic policies which were followed previously and which led to the unprecedented property crash, for which we will be paying well into the future. This Government and its predecessor have acted on these issues. We have been putting the money aside to deal with them and there has been practical and detailed engagement by the Minister, Deputy Coveney, and the Minister of State, Deputy English, with local authorities to ensure that housing will come on stream. That work is certainly under way.

I will now turn to the issue of the national vacant housing re-use strategy. First, as Deputy Ó Broin is aware, there is already a commitment to compile a register of vacant units across the State to identify the number, location and reasons for longer-term vacancies, that is, units vacant for over six months in high-demand areas. There is a range of actions already being undertaken by the Government to bring those vacant houses back into use. The Housing Agency is due to report back on this measure within weeks.

Having said that, I wish to congratulate the Peter McVerry Trust for all the work it does. The trust is hosting a conference today at which it will be highlighting particular issues and also the measures designed to bring vacant properties into use. We will look at the range of recommendations that will emerge by the conference. A number of initiatives are already in place which are designed to bring vacant properties back into use. There is the buy-and-renew initiative, which facilitates local authorities to purchase and renew housing units in need of remediation and make them available for social housing. That initiative has funding of €25 million in 2017 and €50 million for next year. There is also the purchase by the Housing Agency of vacant buy-to-let properties on the portfolios of financial institutions and investor for use as social housing. There is funding of €70 million in place for that measure. There is a range of measures already in place. The vacant site levy will be charged from 2018 onwards, with the first bills being collected in 2019. The vacant site levy will ensure that the levy will be charged at the rate of 3% of the market value of the site. I mention this because it is associated. There are many initiatives already being implemented in order to ensure that those vacant houses come back into use. Every local authority is already working on that.

I know the Tánaiste has difficulty with housing statistics. She told the Dáil two weeks ago that 8,500 social houses were currently being built across the State but the Department of Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government's own figures clearly state that the figure is only 1,892. That is a very a big difference and I am sure the Tánaiste would like to correct the record of the House today. We would welcome her doing that. Just like the unambitious social housing programme, the Government's vacant home schemes are simply not enough. The three schemes spoken of by the Tánaiste promise to deliver, at best, 6,400 homes over six years. Even if the Government meets these targets - I do not believe it will do so - it is only 3% of the total vacant stock out there, and it will take six years, while we have thousands of children in emergency accommodation. There are 1,100 vacant homes available to buy from AIB, Bank of Ireland, Permanent TSB, and yet the Government is only purchasing 200 units.

On the "Morning Ireland" programme this morning, Ms Marie O'Sullivan from Cork pleaded with the Government to take action to ensure that she and thousands of families like hers do not become homeless. Will the Government finally accept responsibility for the housing crisis that the Tánaiste and her colleagues have created? Will they do more than the Tánaiste has currently outlined to ensure that families who desperately need homes do not end up in insecure and inappropriate emergency accommodation?

There are some other statistics that Deputy Ó Broin could have quoted, but which he would, of course, never quote, about the increased investment in this area. Budget 2017 provides for a 40% increase in the level of funding allocated nationally for housing authorities to manage homeless services - funding of approximately €98 million, compared to an initial provision of €70 million in 2016. That additional funding is so important in this area to support families who might go into homelessness. Another figure Deputy Ó Broin could quote is that housing authorities will have assisted in excess of 2,700 sustainable exits from homelessness during 2016. That is a record number of exits.

Homelessness figures are still rising.

Clearly, there is enormous demand, but there are several other statistics which I have given the Deputy today, such as the €32 million available for the repair and leasing scheme. That will bring back into use 800 vacant properties as new homes for families on local authority waiting lists.

Out of almost 200,000.

This funding is a front-loading of the €140 million being made available for the scheme over the next five years, and it targets 3,500 properties. Those are statistics the Deputy ought to be quoting.

That is 3,500 properties over six years. It is shameful.

Deputy, please.

These initiatives are helping real families find sustainable homes and they are taking families out of homelessness.