There are many important issues that could be raised today but I am starting the year as I mean to continue, on the issue of housing, which to my mind will be a legacy failure of this Government unless there is a change of policy. On 29 March last year, the Taoiseach stated the housing and homelessness crisis was a national emergency yet the main causes of this emergency are the housing policies of his Government. The results are devastating. The public housing list has a consistent waiting list of more than 100,000, year on year. Thousands of householders are struggling with mortgage debt. More homeless people are sleeping and dying on our streets and many families in the private rented sector have been evicted as landlords and vulture funds seek to extract higher rents. Ten thousand people are officially homeless, over 3,000 of whom are children, and thousands are unofficially homeless and living in overcrowded homes.

Every week my constituency office is in contact with the Residential Tenancies Board, RTB, representing tenants whose landlords are attempting to illegally evict. I was contacted by a woman last week who will be 60 this year and who lives with her partner. She gets up early every morning and heads to work in the Alzheimer's centre on a 39-hour week. She was renting for 14 years but she and her partner have been homeless since October and are temporarily staying with a relative because the landlord sold the house they were renting. They searched for alternative rented accommodation but could not afford the rents. In her dilemma, she then reduced her working hours from 39 to 28 to bring the household income below the €36,000 threshold and she has applied to Dublin City Council to go on the housing waiting list, although she will be at the end of a long queue. Can the Taoiseach imagine being in that situation? What can he offer this woman for the future under Rebuilding Ireland?

In my constituency two recent planning applications have been submitted to An Bord Pleanála under the strategic housing development strategy to build apartments, although these apartments will be exclusively for rent and for student accommodation and will not be for sale. The question is who will be able to afford the rents and, in addition, there is no security of tenure. Most likely, the supply of more than 300 apartments to rent will feed into more HAP tenancies and line the pockets of developers.

The Government is set to spend over €3 billion on rent subsidies over the next five years. There is an alternative, which is the cost rental model or, as it is more popularly called, the secure, fair rent homes model. This is a public housing strategy that is accessible to everyone who needs a home and to people of all income levels. The rent would be affordable because it would be subsidised and based on the cost of provision, rather than on the market price for accommodation. Fair rent homes are based on a proven European housing programme - the cost rental model. This successful model exists in a number of countries. In Austria alone, approximately 20% of people avail of cost rental housing.

A new housing organisation would need to be established. This organisation could service and manage the finance and oversee the implementation of a fair rent homes programme. It could work with the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government and the city and county councils to build and develop the fair rent homes model on a national scale. There could be a target to build 70,000 homes in the next five years on this basis. Why is the Taoiseach not investigating this strategy and why is the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government not coming forward to drive a strategy of this nature?

I do not doubt for a second the depth of the housing crisis affecting so many of our citizens, whether they are in emergency accommodation at hotels or bed and breakfasts, spending a large proportion of their take-home pay on rent or seeking to buy for the first time by putting together a deposit and finding a home they can afford. We are hard at work as a Government to deal with this. What I can offer the citizen the Deputy mentioned is, first, more supply of housing and apartments, which is fundamental to solving this crisis. We do not know the numbers yet for last year but we suspect that between 19,000 and 20,000 new houses and apartments were built, which is the largest number for a decade. While it is not enough, it is going in the right direction and more than in any other year this decade. Of those, more than 4,500 were public housing units built by local authorities or affordable housing bodies. When was the last time approximately 25% of new housing built in Ireland was public housing? It has not happened for a very long time.

The Deputy mentioned the cost rental model. It has a great deal of merit. As a Government, we have seen how it has worked in other places to provide affordable accommodation, in particular in cities. The Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government has seen it working in Vienna. It is being pursued, including in the Deputy's own constituency at the Emmet Road development which she has supported. It contains a significant proportion of cost-rental housing. As part of the remit of the new Land Development Agency, LDA, between 40% and 50% of public and private land it develops will be public housing of some form, including traditional social housing units, affordable housing and even cost-rental.

Many people feel the Government is working very hard for landlords and developers and not for those who need housing. There are thousands in this city with housing needs. Fair rent homes work on the principle that people pay a fair rent based on the cost to build and maintain their homes. It is not based on the current profit-driven model for which the Taoiseach stands. Fair rent homes are an alternative to the current private rental market and mortgage debt model and offer public rental housing for those with different income levels. The fair rent home is crash-proof and poses a secure rental alternative to debt-based housing provision. It provides stability in the rental sector of the sort that works in other countries. The fair rent home offers security of tenure and lifetime affordable housing, which means people can plan their futures without worrying constantly about increasing rents and the threat of eviction and homelessness, as faced by the woman to whom I referred earlier. A delegation from Dublin City Council visited Vienna recently for a conference and returned convinced that this will work. The proposal must now be driven through the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government to ensure it is implemented here. We could build 70,000 units over the next five years, linked to local authority building of 30,000 units.

I thank the Deputy.

Mr. Mel Reynolds says there is enough land in this country to build at least 100,000 houses. This cannot be a case of simply telling the House that this will be looked at.

The Deputy's time is up.

We want to see it start and being driven now.

I thank the Deputy. I tried my best to answer her question earlier. The Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, has been to Vienna and knows it well. That is one of the reasons he has been driving forward the cost rental model as part of the solution to our housing shortage. To resolve the housing crisis, we need houses of all sorts. We need houses built by developers for young people to buy or for people to upgrade to who want larger homes. We need houses that might be bought by landlords to rent to people who need to rent for one reason or another. We need social housing built by public bodies. As I said to the Deputy, more than 4,000 public homes were built last year by local authorities and affordable housing bodies. Along with leasing, direct purchase and developers, almost 8,000 homes were added to our social housing stock last year. When is the last time that was done? The solution must be housing of all forms because people need housing of all different kinds. Cost rental is absolutely part of that picture.