There is a compliment buried in there somewhere.

I do not know how much the Taoiseach knows about how housing is supplied in this country or about how the construction industry here works.

Not as much as the Deputy.

I do not hold the Taoiseach personally responsible for the fact that the Government has failed to deal with the housing crisis for six years, but he is the boss now and it is on his plate. If the Taoiseach is interested in doing this country a massive favour by deciding to tackle something that no one before him has tackled, he should start by no longer listening to those who have a vested financial interest, including the likes of the Construction Industry Federation, the people who control the real estate investment trusts and the developers. Many developers do not even build any more; they are just working the money. The development land market is controlled by investors rather than builders. Combined Government measures have encouraged investors to purchase and hold large tracts of serviced residential land. In 2012, the Government introduced incentives to get private investors to buy assets at firesale prices and hold them for seven years. It was an incentive not to build. In last year's Finance Act, the period in question was reduced to five years in the case of certain funds. The vacant site levy is a joke. There are more holes in it than in a sieve.

There is a multitude of problems with how we supply housing. The failure to deal with those problems means the next bust is never far away. Will the Taoiseach consider tackling landbanking, which is at the heart of many of our housing supply problems, in a real and meaningful way in next month's budget? The private sector does what it does. It maximises its earning potential in any way possible. The private sector builds when it likes and where it likes, as is its right. The State should not depend on the private sector to provide social and affordable housing. We have tried that approach and it has not worked.

The Taoiseach has spoken about repurposing NAMA to solve our housing problems. NAMA is under investigation in Britain, the US and Ireland. Just 6% of the land that NAMA has sold has been built on. Just 3,000 out of a potential 50,000 homes have been built on that land. Why did NAMA sell land to people who had a vested interest in sitting on it? Why did it sell it at fire-sale prices? Approximately 8,000 units are being developed in Cherrywood. NAMA sold the sites for some 3,800 of them to Hines for approximately €27,000 apiece. Each of those sites is now worth over €100,000. How clever was that? In March 2016, the Irish Strategic Investment Fund invested €30 million in Ardstone Homes. One month later, NAMA sold 120 acres to this developer for €50 million. In addition to selling large bundles of land on the cheap, the State is putting up the money for private developers. Although NAMA has neither the expertise nor the personnel with a background in housing to solve this housing crisis, which it helped to create, it still has close to 5,000 acres of land. None of the NAMA board has any experience in property, not to mention residential property. I put it to the Taoiseach that it is time to give this land to the local authorities to provide social and affordable housing at a reasonable price.

When it comes to this policy matter, and almost any policy matter, the role of the Government is to listen to everyone. Of course we will listen to entities that can provide finance. Of course we will listen to builders who have experience in building homes. As politicians, our constituents are the people to whom we listen the most. Everyone on this side of the House is aware that a large number of those who come into our constituency clinics are struggling to hold onto their homes. Large numbers of people in their 20s and 30s who aspire to own homes for the first time are struggling to do so. I assure the Deputy they are the people to whom we, as practising politicians, listen most often and most frequently.

In terms of next year, because of the increases we are seeing in housing activity, in planning permissions coming through, commencements and so on, we expect approximately 20,000 new homes to be built in 2018 - a significant increase on this year - of which 15,000 will be provided by the private sector and in the region of 5,000 by the Government. It is not the case that we will rely on the private sector to build. We will ramp up the provision of council houses and apartments to approximately 5,000 next year, with 3,800 to be built directly by local authorities and 1,200 to be acquired - in some cases through bringing long-term voids back into use and through Part V provision in others.

In terms of land hoarding and vacant sites not being developed, we have introduced a vacant site levy. The first step will be to draw up a register of sites that are vacant, establish that they are vacant and then impose the levy in respect of them. That is a policy that exists already. We will impose a vacant site levy of 3% on undeveloped sites. It certainly is not working yet. The advice we have is that we need to give people notice to develop. We cannot just impose the levy immediately; people have to be given an opportunity to develop sites. However, that will start to kick in and we will begin to see some of those sites coming into use.

If the Taoiseach examines the vacant site levy, he will see that the penalties for not building are so minuscule that it will pay the people to continue to sit on land and watch the price increase. Every time the price of a house goes up by 10%, the price of the land goes up by a minimum of 30%. In the past three years, 26 houses have been built in Wexford; that is seven per year. It is not happening. The Government has brought out so many measures at this stage we have lost count of them.

In 2016, NAMA sold Project Abbey, the loan portfolio of developer Harcourt Developments, for €300 million. Before it did so, NAMA took out 72 acres of the land and boasted at the housing committee that it would be used for housing. That sounded great, but last week we discovered that it has just turned around and done a deal with the very same developer to build X number of houses. That developer is getting his land back and he will make a fortune on it. The houses in question will not be available at an affordable price for people.

From 2010 to 2016, the average cost of new homes in Dublin increased by 62%, that is, from €284,000 to €461,000. In November last year, the then Minister, Deputy Coveney, confirmed the cost of a three-bedroom house from the local authority was €205,000 in Dublin and €154,000 outside Dublin. Where in God's name is the logic of engaging the private sector to supply housing in the private market for people who cannot afford it? The State can do so. It has got to use the local authorities much more than it is proposing to do at present. It is possible to provide social and affordable housing to people who need it.

It is absolutely our intention to use local authorities more into the future than we have done in the past. As the Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, has just informed me, the number of houses built by local authorities this year will be 2,400. That is four times as many as they built two years ago. I appreciate that is coming from a very low base but to increase the number of local authority houses being built fourfold in two years is significant. We will increase it again next year by another 50% - to approximately 3,800 - so we will ramp up the amount of housing built by local authorities. Yesterday, the Deputy will have seen on the news that not too far from here, near the Grand Canal in Charlemont Place, the Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, doing exactly what he said he should do, namely, topping out a new mixed-use development that has commercial-----

And the developer did not build it-----

-----private and social housing elements to it. The Deputy will see a lot more of that in the period ahead.

To give Deputy Wallace some other information, 15,000 new houses were completed in 2016, which was an increase of 18% on the previous year.

That is ESB connections.

Furthermore, there has been a 40% increase in both planning applications and commencement notices-----

The Taoiseach believes everything he reads.

-----year on year. Not that long ago, people were saying that no student accommodation, new hotels or commercial property was being built. We are now seeing hotels, student accommodation and commercial property being built all over the place.

Can the people afford to rent student accommodation? They cannot. The rents for students are prohibitive.

Next up - it is starting already - is a significant increase in the building of homes, which I believe we will see happen over the next few months and into next year.