During the past week, while within the House there was the fiasco of a crisis that never should have been a crisis, life continued in the real world. Tragically, two homeless men died on the streets, one in Ranelagh on Monday night and the other outside the Four Courts. Two families came to my constituency office having been served with termination notices in respect of their homes in the private rental sector. These families are facing the nightmare of eviction and potential homelessness. One or two such families come to my office every week and it is likely that similar situations take place in the constituency offices of all Dublin Deputies.

During the same week Threshold released its annual report which showed a massive increase in the number of people who were contacting it because of a fear of losing their homes, most of whom were in the private rental sector. A total of 71,000 calls were made to Threshold last year, more than double the number made in 2015. A report issued shortly before stated 40,000 homes could be built on public land that had been zoned for housing. Some 12,000 houses could be built on public land in Dublin alone. Considering that the average cost of building a home, leaving aside land costs, is between €180,000 and €200,000, the cost of building 40,000 such homes would be in the region of €7 billion to €8 billion. If that were to be done over a four to five year period, it would cost between €1.5 billion and €2 billion per year. If there was the political will, the money would be found. For example, in the past three budgets income tax revenue has been reduced by some €3 billion. These tax cuts are largely irrelevant to the living standards of those on low to moderate incomes. That is not a once-off cost of €3 billion but rather the amount of State revenue that would be forgone every year. I have no doubt that people would forgo these minimal cuts in income tax in return for a serious attempt to solve the housing crisis. Another potential source of funds is the €1.3 billion that has been set aside for a rainy day. If having over 3,000 homeless children in the State is not a rainy day, I do not know what is. Perhaps the Government is saving it for a new developer or bank bailout.

The Nevin Economic Research Institute produced a report last year which outlined the potential adoption of the European cost recovery model which could be a game changer in dealing with the housing crisis. It would involve building homes to be rented at below market rates but at a sufficient amount to recover the initial investment in time. The programme for Government states expert groups should be established to consider developing a viable cost rental model for Ireland.

The Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, the previous Minister and the Department are all considering this. Does the Taoiseach agree it is time for them to get up off their backsides and implement a programme of public housing on public land?

I want to say how deeply saddened I am, as I think everyone is, to hear of the deaths in recent days of two people who were homeless. On my behalf and on behalf of the entire House, I express my condolences to the families and friends of those affected. We understand that one homeless man in his late 30s who had been sleeping rough at the Four Courts has passed away; The Irish Times reports he was a Lithuanian national and may have died as a result of a drug overdose. The other death occurred in Ranelagh. The cause of the latter death is unknown at this time but we understand that he had been offered shelter.

Regarding the actions that are taking place, the Minister, Deputy Murphy, has already announced a number of very important measures to ensure that more beds and more shelter are available over the next couple of weeks. Twenty-six additional permanent beds will be provided tonight on Little Britain Street, 25 additional permanent beds in Cabra will be available on Thursday night, and an additional 67 temporary beds will come on stream this week. Therefore, by 18 December we will have 200 more beds available, and by beds I mean single beds or double beds in rooms, not cots. We want to be assured that there is, or at least will be, a bed and shelter available for everyone who needs them in the city not just for the winter period, but beyond into the spring and summer as well. We are also stepping up our actions when it comes to the Housing First programme, whereby not only homes and apartments are provided for people who are homeless, but also wraparound services in order that they are able to stay in the homes or apartments they are given. Since we introduced Housing First solutions, 180 people have already gone from rough sleeping into those solutions. These people were sleeping rough and now have housing with support and have managed to stay in that housing. The Minister will appoint a Housing First director quite soon in order to ensure we can move more people off the streets and into homes through that programme.

The Government's plan to build more housing is very much under way. A Supplementary Estimate of €100 million was also approved at Cabinet on Tuesday morning for the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government. This will enable the Department to meet the costs that have been run up by local authorities in building housing over the past year. Deputies will be aware that 2,000 houses will have been built directly by local authorities by the end of this year, which is a major increase on only a few hundred a year or two ago. We have a €1.8 billion social housing budget for next year for housing, which will allow us to increase the number of social homes built to 3,800. This is almost a doubling and does not include additional social housing acquired by renovating voids, purchasing them from developers, long-term leasing or Part V. This will bring the total number closer to 7,000. Therefore, the issue we will run into is not money at all but rather the capacity of the construction sector to build all these homes. Housebuilding is now ramping up. We can see this from the numbers and we are starting to see it around us, all around the country. The constraining factor will not be money from the Government, but rather the availability of sites and construction workers and others to build the houses we desperately need.

I thank the Taoiseach for his report on the homelessness crisis, but what I wanted to raise with him is public housing on public land. That was the main content of my question. He sort of half dealt with it. Part of the approach of Rebuilding Ireland includes the proposal to have 125,000 people in HAP households. By 2021, that will cost the State €1 billion a year. Providing these 120,000 social housing units through HAP will cost €32.9 billion over 30 years. That money would be much more deservedly put into public housing on public lands. We know that Dublin City Council has public lands on which to build at least 12,000 houses. It should get more land through other methods of acquiring land in Dublin. The Taoiseach opened a housing development recently at which he mentioned that it contained affordable homes but he forgot to mention that these houses were selling for between €320,000 and €390,000, which is certainly not affordable. We need affordable homes for workers in Tesco and Dunnes, on construction sites and in the general economy who earn under €50,000. This can be done through the plan put forward by Tom Healy of the Nevin Economic Research Institute.

I do not believe it is a case of either-or and HAP works for many people. It allows them to live in private rented accommodation, often - almost always, in fact - in a private housing estate or private apartment block. I know from my experience in my own constituency that many people living with a HAP tenancy or with rent supplement in a private housing estate or a private housing development, when offered social housing, decide not to take it because they would prefer to stay where they are as their children are in the local school, they have connections to the area and they want to stay in the housing they are in at that time. Many people make this decision because it works for them to stay in private rented accommodation on occasion. It also helps to bring about integrated communities. We do not particularly want to go back to the era of huge social housing estates which generate or become a focus for social problems. We want integrated developments as much as possible. It is our intention to reduce our reliance on rent supplement initially and HAP as we build more social housing. There will be a €25 million funded affordability scheme for public lands, and the Minister, Deputy Murphy, will produce the information on this as soon as he possibly can with new income limits.