There were no answers.

The budget announcements made by the Minister for Finance, Deputy Donohoe, yesterday on the issue of the emergency in housing and homelessness were nothing more than a hoax and a very cynical sleight of hand that involves rehashing commitments on social housing that were made long in advance of the budget and offering absolutely nothing to the thousands of families affected by the homelessness crisis or the 100,000 families rotting on housing lists with no hope of getting council homes. The Minister said that 3,800 new social houses will be provided next year. That was already announced by the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, so there was nothing extra or new. A total of 17,000 housing assistance payment, HAP, tenancies were announced. That matter was already dealt with in the Rebuilding Ireland plan published by the previous Minister, Deputy Coveney. There is nothing new a year on as the crisis escalates and the number of people in homelessness services gets worse. Some 8,000 people, including 3,000 children, are homeless now. There is nothing new on a failed plan. Is that acceptable?

I want to let the Taoiseach know that, in the past two weeks, the situation has got worse. The first line of defence is council housing. The Government effectively stopped building that type of housing in 2011. The second line of defence is hubs and emergency accommodation. Both are now full. Families who are homeless are being told by text - they are not even receiving telephone calls - by local authorities that there is no emergency accommodation for them. The last line of defence against homelessness for families has collapsed in the past couple of weeks because all the hotels are full as well. My office spent two days ringing around last week for Kayley, a young mother and student, and her children. Three staff members phoned all the hotels on the approved list for hotel accommodation for those homeless people. There was nothing available. We also have Sinéad, Kayley's friend, another student with children who is in the same situation and there is nothing available for them. There is another of a mum and dad with five children. One is very heavily traumatised and her psychiatrist has expressed great worry about the young baby, two of them are toddlers and three are attending school. They phone around on a day-to-day basis and are thrown out every morning. They do not know if they will have a roof over their heads each day. There is another family with eight children - and one on the way - living in homeless accommodation and they are thrown out at the weekends because the hotels are full. They have to fend for themselves over the weekend with eight children. The defences against homelessness are collapsing and, against that background, the Government offers nothing new except a hoax, pretending to give something new when that something has all already been announced. Does the Taoiseach think that is acceptable in the face of the current housing emergency?

I am not in a position to comment on individual cases without knowing the facts and being able to have them verified. Even if I was able to do that, I would not be able to breach individual confidentiality. If there are individual cases that the Deputy wants to raise, the Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, would be happy to look into them. Up until now, we have been able to provide emergency accommodation for any family that needs it. That has been done. Thankfully, we do not have any families on our streets. I know that is nothing to be particularly proud of but we have avoided that through the use of emergency accommodation. In addition, there are now fewer people in hotels and bed and breakfast accommodation than previously was the case as a result of the development of family hubs in Dublin and elsewhere.

There were a number of new announcements relating to housing yesterday. It was announced, for example, that the vacant site levy will increase to 7%. That is an important measure designed to free up land for development and prevent the hoarding of land. There was also a new announcement on capital gains tax, ending the seven-year rule, thus allowing more land to come into development. There was a new announcement regarding a new housing finance agency that will provide €750 million, a lot of new money, for development finance to builders in order that they might build affordable housing throughout the country. A barrier to building housing is the inability of developers, particularly small builders, to obtain finance. Three new announcements were made yesterday, backed by money, so Deputy Boyd Barrett's argument is, evidently, incorrect.

In the context of the provision of funding in respect of announcements which have already been made, that is the case because funding was provided yesterday in respect of announcements made previously. This money will allow us to increase significantly the number of council houses and apartments being built. In 2015, only about 500 public houses or council houses - whichever term one prefers to use - were built. That number will rise to 2,000 this year. These are houses built directly by councils and approved housing bodies. Next year, because of the additional funding provided - a 50% increase in the capital budget - 3,800 houses will be built. In addition, 1,200 social houses will be brought on stream by renovating voids and through Part V. Some 900 will be acquired and approximately 2,000 will be provided through long-term leasing. This means that 7,900 homes will be added to social housing stock next year, all things going to plan. In addition, and I am pretty sure that this was a new announcement, funding for homelessness bodies and agencies is going up by 18%, from approximately €98 million to €120 million next year, which is a significant increase.

I want to ring the alarm bells for the Taoiseach. People cannot even get into hotels now.

Families cannot get a family hub or emergency accommodation. They cannot even get a hotel now because when they ring the hotels they are told the hotels already have a full complement of Dublin City Council-approved homeless families. Not only has the Government not got them out of hotels - some of them would love a hotel because they have nowhere else to go - they cannot even get a hotel. I just wanted to tell the Taoiseach that this is where we have come to.

As we had already heard about the 3,800 units, there was nothing new in the budget in this regard. Not a single extra social housing unit. This is against a situation where the last line of defence on homelessness has collapsed. It is not going to cut it. As for home building finance Ireland, HBFI, along with the local infrastructure housing activation fund, LIHAF, it involves more handouts, extraordinarily, for private developers. As the banks we bailed out will not lend to the private developers, we are now going to give cheap money to private developers to build on public land and who will then sell the properties back to the State at inflated prices. What sort of madness is that? The LIHAF is a failure and the Government has allocated more money to it. Private developers are now looking for well in excess of the €300,000 cap, which the Government has lifted. They are going to sell us back at exorbitant prices the land we sold them at a discount. What madness is that?

That is not true.

It is 7,000 homes.

It is true. Look at Cherrywood.

Deputy, please.

We sold land to Hines and the average house price sought there is now €500,000.

Please allow the Taoiseach to respond.

First of all, LIHAF is not a failure. It is Government money provided to give sites access and make them developable. I would have thought that - even from Deputy Boyd Barrett's point of view - he would have thought it an essential role of the State to provide public infrastructure to sites for housing. That is what LIHAF does. It connects the roads, brings in the water services and does all the things that are needed to make it possible for people to build on a site-----

For other people to build, for the market.

-----and that is what we continue to do. If I turned around in this House and suggested that public roads and infrastructure should to be provided by private developers, I imagine that Deputy Boyd Barrett would also be against that so it is one of those situations where we just cannot win no matter what we do.

That is nonsense. Public housing is needed.

I gave a few examples of new announcements that were made yesterday in respect of the new housing finance vehicle. That will lend the money to developers to build on commercial terms. This body will have €750 million, it will use the expertise of NAMA, and it will lend the money to builders to build houses and they will then pay it back. We anticipate that it will not only produce new houses, it will also generate a return for the taxpayer.

The Deputy made reference to measures being announced previously and the funding announced in the budget. That is actually a normal course of events. For example, some weeks ago the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection, Deputy Regina Doherty, announced that maternity leave would be extended for mothers of children who are born prematurely. This was announced some weeks ago but the money made available to do that was announced in the budget. That is often how it works. Some weeks ago I announced that we would extend our diplomatic footprint and open new embassies around the world. In yesterday's budget money was provided for this measure and the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade gave more details on it. This is not something to be shocked or scandalised by. It is often the case that during the course of the year Ministers will make announcements about things they intend to do, and then the funding is provided for in the budget. That is how budgets work.

Families cannot even find a place in a hotel.