I too recognise and welcome our distinguished visitors to the House.

The Government yesterday repackaged and rebranded three announcements on housing. Rents are now at an all-time high in Dublin, 14% above the previous 2007 peak. The pilot affordable rental scheme will be of little benefit to those facing record rents and new leases. The Government plans to reduce costs, build smaller apartments, reintroduce bedsits and have people use shared kitchens and other facilities. We still do not know how many new homes were built last year but it is believed that fewer than 10,000 new homes were completed in that period although between 25,000 and 35,000 were needed. The private market has failed to deliver.

The affordable purchase scheme is light on specifics but the hope is that it will deliver between 3,000 and 10,000 homes. It would provide developers with access to State-owned property and the State would fund the servicing of State-owned lands.

The newly rebranded council loan scheme has also been announced. The amount that people can borrow under the scheme has been reduced from 97% to 90% of the cost of a house. Those who might apply, many of whom have already visited my constituency office, are already paying record rents and will now have to face additional costs in terms of a deposit. For example, a person would have to save a deposit of €20,000 to purchase a €200,000 house. The help-to-buy scheme may provide some assistance in that regard and fixing interest rates would be of benefit over the lifetime of a loan but the numbers benefitting will be small.

The Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, yesterday said there is no need for a new agency with money, power, resources and control of land to build and deliver affordable housing. The State intends to change building regulations to make apartments more profitable, to provide the land for affordable housing, to pay for infrastructure through the housing activation fund, to finance developers - as announced at the time of the budget - through Home Building Finance Ireland, to help people to put together a deposit through the help-to-buy scheme and now intends to finance loans to home buyers through the Rebuilding Ireland home loan scheme. In that case, why do we not establish a new housing agency to deliver affordable housing and use the 700 publicly owned sites we have and the monetary resources the Government has allocated - more could be available through NAMA - to work with the local authorities and voluntary housing agencies to build and deliver these houses?

The Government's objectives on housing are threefold. First, it aims to reduce the number of people who are homeless. I am encouraged by the reduction in the number of rough sleepers over the Christmas period and into January and the fall in the number of families in emergency accommodation in January as a consequence of Government actions. However, one fall is not a trend, so I do not want to make too much of that although it is encouraging that those two things have been recorded and recognised.

The second objective is to provide more social housing in order to reduce the housing list. I am encouraged that the number of houses being built by local authorities and approved housing bodies is increasing, from fewer than 700 in 2016 to more than 2,000 in 2017. It will be closer to 4,000 this year. If we could ramp things up quicker we would, but it takes time to ramp up construction in the public and the private sector given the lost decade we have had.

One of our very important objectives is to recognise the fact that the vast majority of people provide their own housing. They save, get a mortgage and buy their house. This is what they want. They want to be able to buy and own their own home. We have to assist people to do that. This involves a number of things such as putting in place actions that will help the private sector and builders to start building again. We do not have a perfect measure of the number of houses that are built in the State in any given year but it appears to have been between 15,000 and 20,000 last year. This also shows an increase in construction. The fact is that we can see this construction all around us, be it cranes or housing estates in our constituencies. We anticipate new home construction rising to between 20,000 and 25,000 this year, getting to the point where things stop getting worse, as it were, and perhaps getting better again the year after.

As well as building houses, people need to be able to get mortgages and this is why the Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, brought the proposals forward yesterday. It is for people who have not been able to get a mortgage from the bank so they can go to their local authority and secure a low-interest loan with a guaranteed interest rate for 30 years, which I believe is a positive offer. I am aware there were a huge number of calls being made to the authorities about the Rebuilding Ireland loan and extra staff have been taken on because of the number of people contacting the helpline and accessing the Rebuilding Ireland loan website.

With regard to the setting up of new agencies, I believe that the establishment of a new agency is often the default solution to every problem in Ireland. It does not always work. It is not something we would rule out but we must be realistic about it. It takes nearly 12 months to set up a new government agency and that is what one spends one's time doing during that period, not building houses. This new agency would presumably still have to contract out to the private sector. Unless it is taking on builders, carpenters, plumbers and so on, an agency such as that would have to contract and do procurement so even after a 12 month set up period, it would only then be starting on the process of issuing tenders.

I would also be very cautious of doing anything that takes the pressure off local authorities. We are putting councils and local authorities under enormous pressure to start building again. Some of them are doing better than others and it concerns me when I hear the Opposition suggesting that in some way responsibility might be taken away from the local authorities and handed over to an agency. Some councils or local authorities would not mind getting out of this entirely and if they thought that another party was going to come along and relieve them of this burden and obligation, it would not be helpful.

Housing is an essential element of any civilised society. The notion that the Taoiseach would be so complacent as to think it is all right and it is all working is amazing. I thought we had all agreed that not enough homes were being built for affordable sale or rent in the State. People at whom the new council loan scheme is aimed will have to find somewhere between €15,000 and €30,000 as a deposit. How are the very people who are being refused mortgages by banks and building societies supposed to pay exorbitant rent and at the same time save €20,000 or €25,000 as a deposit? That is a hopeless task to put to them. Effectively, the Government is now financing every side of the private housing market. From every angle, the Government has found a support base for the private housing market. What I ask for is very simple - the creation of a national State agency to use the resources of the State, the land of the State and the commitment of the State to build affordable housing for our people in a crisis.

The Taoiseach will conclude on this matter.

I did not actually make any of the contentions that Deputy Howlin has accused me of, so I will not reply to them one by one. It is often the case that people are refused a mortgage because they cannot pay the interest rate. Consider the difference between a mortgage where the interest rate is 3.5% and a mortgage with an interest rate of 2% which is guaranteed and locked in for 30 years.

One's ability to afford a mortgage is based on the monthly repayment and the repayments under this mortgage will be considerably lower than is the case for mortgages given by the banks.

If the person can save €20,000.

We will be able to assess this in the next couple of weeks and months and will see how many people apply for and get these new loans. I predict this might be one of the ones where we will be coming back in a few months' time to expand it and will be offering these low-cost loans with fixed interest rates to more people.

It should have happened years ago.

It has always been the case that a person needs to raise a deposit to buy a house. People do it in many different ways. Sometimes people go abroad for a period and earn money. Others get money from their parents. Lots of us did. Others get money through other loans. Sometimes people stay at home for a period and raise a deposit in that way. It has always been the case that a person had to be able to raise a deposit to buy his or her own home, with the exception of one period during the boom when we had 100% loans. I would not like us to get back to 100% loans because we know where that led us.