I am glad the Tánaiste mentioned housing, particularly social housing. As I have said a number of times in recent weeks, a major national demonstration will take place on 7 April to demand precisely that the Government breaks from its current reliance on the private sector, private developers and landlords to deal with the housing emergency and that the State, through the local authorities, builds the council houses we need. In that context, we were provided with a perfect instance on Sunday in an article in The Sunday Business Post that shocked even me, and it takes a fair bit to shock me, concerning Richard Barrett, a developer, formerly of Treasury Holdings, whose loans the National Asset Management Agency, NAMA, had to buy out for €1 billion with public money. He is now boasting that he will be the biggest provider of social housing outside the State as part of the Rebuilding Ireland plan. In what I understand were arrangements negotiated with the Minister, Deputy Murphy's Department, Mr. Barrett said he was very pleased with the generosity of the Minister in terms of his time with respect to Bartra Capital, which is financed by Mr. Barrett and international investors, which will provide 1,200 social housing units on a long-term lease basis for 25 years at 95% of market rents.

Mr. Barrett and his investors are very pleased with the deal because they will make an absolute killing out of it. The cost of 1,200 units at current rents nationally will work out at approximately €400,000 per unit for the State for those 25 years, not taking into account likely rent increases. If we multiply that by 1,200, we are talking about in excess of a €400 million cost to the State. The fact that most of them will be built in areas such as Dublin and the urban centres means that the cost will be much higher. Where average rents are higher, we are talking almost certainly in excess of €500 million for 1,200 units. Mr. Barrett, Bartra Capital and Mr. Barrett's property speculator investor friends will make an absolute killing when the State could directly build those houses for a fraction of the cost. At the end of the process the State would own them. We would generate rental revenue, which would come back to the State instead of hundreds of millions of euro going out of the State to Mr. Barrett's friends. When we consider that under Rebuilding Ireland, as well as Bartra Capital, 10,000 of the Minister, Deputy Murphy's planned 50,000 units will be leased in this manner, we are looking at a bill of billions of euro going to private developers to benefit from the social housing emergency they helped to create. How can Tánaiste possibly justify that? It is obscene.

It is not the first time the Deputy and I have had this engagement. I will make a number of comments. The Deputy is right on one aspect. We do have a social housing emergency and we are dealing with it in a way that is multifaceted.

We are encouraging and inviting private investment to solve the problem, as well as committing billions of euro of public money to solve it.

The difference between the Deputy and I is that he does not like the fact that anybody may be able to make a profit on the back of solving or helping to solve a problem. He only wants the State to be involved in social housing and nobody else. The problem with that strategy is that he is expecting the State to do all the heavy lifting. What we have is a policy which is about encouraging private sector investment in social housing solutions as well as complementing massive public sector investment.

We have to continue the trend. Last year, we delivered three times as many social houses as were delivered the previous year. Next year, we will have to deliver three times again. We will have to keep building until we get close to 10,000 units a year being delivered into social housing outcomes to ensure we deal with the scale of the problem.

The Deputy knows that, while we are gearing up to that, we must have a significant reliance on the private rental market, which he also always keeps criticising. The Deputy's solution, however, is not deliverable overnight. It takes time to dramatically scale up the delivery of social housing by the State, approved housing bodies and the private sector. We are looking at different ways of ensuring that when one combines those different approaches, one gets a massive response in terms of delivering new social housing solutions. This is what we are about because of the scale of the problem and the fact that for nearly ten years we did not have the resources to be able to put into social housing. This, in turn, created an extraordinary demand, particularly in Dublin city but also in other places.

The Deputy should not simply pick one element of the solution and ditch it for some ideological reason because he does not like to see somebody investing in solutions on the back of getting a modest return on it. Part of the solution is about getting families into decent homes in which they know they have security of tenure for long periods and out of the pressurised situations in which many of them find themselves today.

I do not know whether the Tánaiste is missing the point or just trying to throw mud in people's eyes. According to the article in The Sunday Business Post, the development in question will cost €400 million. I have just outlined how, at an absolute minimum based on current average rents, at the end of this, the State will have paid for the development and a hell of a lot more on top - it could be in excess of €500 million - but will not own it. Mr. Barrett and his friends can pull out of the lease arrangement after 25 years, walk away with a massively valuable asset and evict social housing tenants, having made an enormous profit. This is against the State spending that same money, which we are paying for either way, directly in building council houses. In that case, we would have security for social housing tenants, rental revenue coming to the State and own the asset at the end.

None of that will happen because the Government is insistent that Mr. Barrett and other property speculators have to make extortionate profits out of a social housing emergency which is blighting the lives of tens of thousands of families.

I respectfully suggest the Deputy is missing the point, not me. Money is not the obstacle to delivering social housing. Local authorities which have good projects on their books are getting the funding they need to progress them. The challenge is capacity and to deliver the scale of social housing we want in time and to meet demand. We have had an enormous increase in housing budgets to deliver on that social housing need. We also want to get on top of that. To complement what we are doing, we want private sector investment, as well as the private sector delivering social housing solutions under long-term leasing arrangements. This means we can get people out of private sector rental accommodation, where they do not have the security of tenure they may be looking for, into long-term leasing arrangements for ten or 20 years, where they will get the kind of security of tenure for which they are looking.

There is a role for the private sector in adding to the number of social housing solutions being delivered.

That will be done at €400,000 or €500,000 a unit.

The scale of delivery that is needed, and which I think the Deputy is looking for, cannot be delivered purely through local authority-led schemes.

Madness.