Deputy Paul Murphy is next, unless Deputy Coppinger is substituting.

I will read a newspaper quote to the Tánaiste. Ms Cherie Ellorig, a Filipino woman who lives in an apartment in Exchange Hall, just around the corner from Tallaght Hospital where she is a nurse, states:

I got my notice [to quit] in the first week of March and it was so shocking. For weeks after I got the letter I was so stressed. I can't concentrate on my work. I can't eat or sleep. I’ve lost nearly 3 kg in the last couple of weeks.

Another woman, Natalia, whose husband is a night porter in the same hospital, has two children. She stated:

They're not aware of what's going on ... I'm trying to keep things as normal as possible for them, even though we are very stressed.

I got an eviction notice on February 28th telling me I have to move out by October 10th. I don't know what to do.

Cherie and Natalia are part of a group of at least 12 families in Exchange Hall who are facing eviction. They are good tenants. They pay their rents and have built a real community together, but they are still facing eviction. The reason is greed - pure and simple - and the Government allows that greed, the drive for maximisation of profits by landlords, to come before the rights of people to a home. The landlords, Rennicks and McPeake, want to sell two floors with vacant possession so that they can maximise the selling price.

If they are evicted, what does the Tánaiste expect them to do? One resident, Ian, told me last night that even though he is almost 40, he would have to move back in with his mother. He says that those who do not have families here, will not be so lucky. They will not have that option and some of them could be made homeless.

As the Tánaiste will be aware, it is not the only group of tenants who are facing a crisis situation. Eviction from private rented accommodation is the number one cause of homelessness.

The Exchange Hall tenants, inspired by the victory of the Leeside residents in Cork, have got organised and will be opposing any eviction. They are taking a case to the RTB but it is not clear whether they will come under the Tyrrelstown amendment because of the way that the ownership of the properties is organised.

Does the Tánaiste agree that they should not have to campaign in order to keep their homes? Does he agree that landlords should not be able to use sale as a reason for eviction regardless of how many evictions are taking place at one time and that, as in Germany, The Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark, they should be required to sell with tenants in situ as proposed by our Anti-Evictions Bill 2018, passed through Second Stage, but which it seems the Government is seeking to block by withholding a money message?

Does the Tánaiste agree that their case, as well as the entire housing crisis which has been referred to a lot during this Leaders' Questions session, shows that the entire model of relying on the private market is a failure? Those seeking to build a movement here should look at what is happening in Berlin where tens of thousands of people have been on the streets demanding expropriation of the corporate landlords. They are building towards a referendum which will do just that. Has the Tánaiste ever considered that, instead of encouraging the so-called cuckoos, real estate investment trusts, REITs, and vulture funds by giving them favourable tax treatment, these properties should be nationalised and brought into the public housing stock?

We are increasing, and will continue to increase, public housing stock year after year. I hope we will add 10,000 social housing units this year and that will increase again next year. We will add an extra 50,000 social housing units over the five-year duration of the Rebuilding Ireland programme and the Government is committed to that.

This Government is sometimes painted by some in this House as only having an interest in the private rental market and private purchase sector and that is not true. We are investing billions of euros in social housing because it is needed. There are many who cannot afford private rental prices or to buy their own homes and they need State intervention, assistance and support and they will get that. We do not have enough at the moment and we are trying to correct that as quickly as possible.

People getting notice to quit and that, in turn, driving homelessness is an issue and the Deputy is right to point it out. Many of the families and individuals who come into homelessness have come from the private rental market because they either cannot afford the rent any longer or they face eviction notices. The Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, has responded to that and is introducing a series of amendments to legislation going through the House to add more protections for tenants, and to extend notice periods to give people more time.

I recognised there was an issue and introduced the Tyrrelstown amendment when I was Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government but we must try to balance that with the impact the wrong legislation would have on supply. This is not about prioritising landlords over tenants because we have clearly prioritised tenants over landlords. However, we need landlords and people investing in the private rental market. Without getting the balance right, we will introduce more legislation to protect tenants in a market with a shrinking housing stock. That is a fool's game and it will not work. We need property in the market and to ensure that we have a better regulated, more predictable and consistent rental market in which people can put longer-term tenancies in place. I am in favour of very long-term tenancies, if possible, but that also has to be done with a step-by-step approach, otherwise we would create shocks in the system that would result in a reduction, rather than an increase, in supply at a time it is badly needed.

The Tánaiste referred to shocks in the system but what about the shock to the families of Natalia, Ian, Cherie and the others I spoke about earlier? What kind of shock to their systems is acceptable? What does he suggest that they do?

The logic of this Government is laid bare by the Tánaiste's answer and by the front page of today's Irish Independent. That logic is that we need to incentivise massive corporations to get involved in the housing sector here because that will be the answer. Those corporations are incentivised by being allowed to have the highest rental yields in all of Europe.

Under pressure from a movement among Tyrrelstown residents, the Government decided that more than ten residents cannot be evicted at the same time, but does the Tánaiste think it is okay, for example, that eight such residents could be evicted? Let us take the case of the residents of Exchange Hall. If it is found that there are only eight tenants in properties owned by one landlord in that building, does the Tánaiste think evicting them is okay? The Government opposed amendments at the time which would have expanded the remit of the Tyrrelstown amendment.

The consequence of this reliance on the private market to deliver is that the Government is communicating that, ultimately, the right to profit of these vultures, REITs and cuckoos comes before the right of people to a home. The Tánaiste referred to 10,000 units of public housing but does not admit that a large portion of that is the State transferring public money into private hands through the HAP scheme and other means, which is the problem. The answer is public housing.

The Deputy is right that part of the answer is public housing. That is why we are investing billions in it. We have an over-reliance on the private rental market in the short term while we build up the social housing stock to deliver the kind of capacity that is needed. Our population is growing by over 70,000 per year at the moment and many families are under pressure in the private rental market, some of whom are facing the challenge of homelessness. We are changing that, primarily through driving housing supply.

The Deputy asked whether we should provide the protections contained in the Tyrrelstown amendment in cases in which fewer that ten properties are sold. One needs also to consider property rights in the Constitution and there was a lot of legal discussion on the amendment and how low we could make that number. I was in the middle of that discussion.

As I said earlier, 70% of landlords in Ireland only rent one property. If we create a situation whereby they are unable to sell that property, that raises the spectre of people not making properties available for rent at all. The consequences of that would make many of the issues we are discussing even more difficult and pressurised.

Landlords should be able to sell with tenants in situ.