There will be a protest by the Raise the Roof campaign at 1 p.m. this Saturday starting on Parnell Square. The campaign includes People Before Profit, many of the other Opposition parties, almost all of the trade unions and almost all of the housing non-government organisations, NGOs. We hope we will all come together along with tens of thousands of people to appeal to this Government to abandon its failed policies for dealing with the housing and homelessness emergency. The housing crisis is inflicting shameful hardship on the tens of thousands of people affected and stealing the future from a whole generation of young and working people. They can never hope to pay the extortionate rents being charged in the private market or afford the extortionate house prices being charged in that same market.

Average house prices in Dublin are now more than ten times the salary of an average worker. House prices in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown are now 15 to 16 times higher than the average salary of a worker. Rents have gone up by 42%. We are at the point now where one in five people is paying more than 40% of income in rent and one in ten is paying more than 60% of income in rent. The real scandal is with the housing assistance payment scheme, HAP. The scheme has totally failed as a supposed substitute for council housing. An incredible 50% of those on the HAP scheme are paying top-ups in excess of the money they receive because of extortionate rents. In my area, 70% of people on HAP are paying top-ups to landlords and they are being told to use their children's allowance payments to make up the difference. The number of children in homeless accommodation has gone up by 247% since this Government came into office. It is shameful.

The Raise the Roof campaign is asking the Government to at least double the budget for the direct construction of council housing and affordable housing on public land. We have not had a single affordable house and the number of directly built council houses last year was just over 800. Including purchases, regenerations and similar actions, the total comes to 4,000 houses. More than 100,000 families, probably 250,000 people, are on the housing lists, with some waiting for ten or 15 years. In addition, there are those who have been knocked off the housing lists because their income is considered too high, despite being too low to rent or buy in this extortionate market. The Government is offering them nothing. What other choice do these people have but to come onto the streets in their tens of thousands to demand a change of policy or to get rid of this Government? We could then bring in a Government that will actually deliver the basic right to have a secure and affordable roof over the heads of our citizens.

The Government is listening to what is being said by all of the organisations, political parties and people who will be at the Raise the Roof campaign protest on Saturday. We understand the pressures and frustrations many families are facing because the general rental and housing market is not delivering for people in the way it needs to. We are changing that. That is why almost 5,000 social houses are being built on 291 sites throughout the country. We will add 10,000 units to the social housing stock this year.

This idea that we are just letting the market solve the problems over time is simply not true and not borne out by the facts. We will spend €2.4 billion on our housing budget this year. That is by far the highest ever spending on housing in Ireland. We will provide 27,000 or more housing solutions for people who need the support of and intervention by the State. I have stated that there is an over-reliance on the private rental market to provide solutions for people under pressure every time the Deputy has asked me these questions. That over-reliance is putting the rental market under pressure and that is why the only solution is increased supply across all segments of the housing market. We will add an extra 50,000 housing units to the social housing stock over the lifetime of the Rebuilding Ireland plan. I remind everybody that was the figure that the all-party housing committee asked the Government to deliver and that is what we are seeking to do. We also have in place agreed plans and funding for affordable housing schemes, which are starting. We also need an environment that attracts investment into the housing market in respect of high density, affordable apartment living in the cities, as well as more conventional family homes. That is happening, as the Central Statistics Office, CSO, figures this morning confirm. More than 22,000 houses came into use in the past 12 months. This year, we hope to add an extra 25,000 housing units to the overall housing stock. Between 20% and 25% of these new-builds will be social houses.

I understand the frustration and we are hearing it and responding to it. People who paint a picture of a Government that is not listening and is not plugged into the housing pressures many families across Ireland are feeling do not understand what we are doing. Housing is a massive priority for this Government. The proof of that is where we are spending money and the amount of new legislation and policy change implemented in this area. That will continue. We understand the situation. We live in a democracy. People should protest if they feel strongly about something and make sure they are heard by the Government. We are, however, hearing the message and taking action. We are spending much more money changing policy and legislation to fix the housing market and it will be fixed over time.

We now have the lowest number of available rental properties ever. The vast majority of those that are available are completely unaffordable. I was talking to a taxi driver this morning who has been approved for a mortgage by his bank. It is for €250,000 in west Dublin. He said he can forget it, however, as he will never get a house because the average house price in Dublin is now €445,000. I will tell the Government what its policies are doing and I will start with what is happening with strategic housing developments. In one such development in Dún Laoghaire, Bartra Capital is planning to build 200 units, not rooms or homes but 16 sq. m boxes with fold-out beds for which it will charge rents of €1,300 or €1,400. The development will be given fast-track planning approval. That is what is actually going on.

I was down on Mayor Street in Spencer Dock today where working class families have been overwhelmed by Kennedy Wilson, Johnny Ronan and all the boys who are back building and charging rents of €3,000. Local people told me their kids will never be able to afford those rents. Working class people are being socially cleansed from the city centre to make profits for the boys who are back in town. That is what the Government's policies are facilitating. They are not delivering affordable housing to purchase or rent or the council housing we need to put a roof over the heads of ordinary people.

This debate descends into working class people versus, supposedly, other classes of people whenever Deputy Boyd Barrett raises it. Our job as a Government is to recognise that all types of families and people from different backgrounds and incomes have housing needs. Some of those people, including some in the city centre of Dublin, need the help of the State to be able to live and work in a way that is sustainable and makes sense for them. We are trying to increase the supply of all types of housing to rent or buy and to make affordable housing available. That is why we are examining models such as the cost-rental model in city centre areas.

Rightly, the Deputy raised the pressure of there being fewer rental properties available now than at times in the past. If the proposals the Deputy and others have been making were taken on board by the Government and implemented, however, we would have fewer properties again. That is the reality. In our efforts to solve one problem by alleviating pressures, we create another problem in shutting off the appetite for investment in the kinds of properties we need. Our job is to respond to all of the pressures and challenges at the same time by spending significantly more money to provide social and affordable housing for those who need it in the city centre and elsewhere while also creating an environment in which private money is available to deliver the numbers that are needed, namely, 35,000 to 40,000 housing units across all spectrums on an annual basis. That is where we need to get to. I am afraid the Deputy's policies do not take us there.

I wish also to address the housing crisis and homelessness but to come at it from a completely different angle. I propose a solution which, in addition to attempting to solve the housing crises, seeks also to address town and village sustainability. I have spoken about this before, including to the Minister for Rural and Community Development, Deputy Michael Ring, and the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, but, unfortunately, it has not gained any traction. It is a solution which deserves closer examination.

There are many vacant properties in our towns and villages which could be brought up to standard or redesigned to a standard whereby they could be offered to families who wish to relocate voluntarily from areas of high pressure and housing shortage to get out of homelessness and unsustainably expensive accommodation while starting a new and structured life in our rural towns and villages. The community would benefit by having villages and towns rejuvenated with children attending local schools. Local services and businesses would be supported by those people who chose to relocate. To give a recent example, our housing association in Kilmihil in County Clare offered a house to a man who lives in a council house in a high pressure area. His health was failing and he wished to relocate back to the village where he had connections. He was giving up a three-bedroom council house which he did not need as his family had grown up and moved away. He benefitted from moving back to his local area and the local authority was benefitting by having that house available for a family. As such, two families benefitted from this. The local authority also benefitted.

If one such solution were offered in each county per year, it would mean 52 families benefitting. If ten villages in each county offered a voluntary relocation solution every year, which is quite feasible, 520 families would benefit while allowing other families to move into the vacated accommodation. To make such a scheme work and to scale it up from the example I have described, a central point of contact must be established within the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government. Through that contact point, communities could give notice of wishing to participate in a scheme like this and local authorities could engage together to allow such a scheme to proceed. It would also allow the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government, the Department of Rural and Community Development and housing agencies to co-operate to facilitate people who wished voluntarily to relocate and get out of the homelessness crisis. It would benefit them and other families as well as the communities to which they moved. Will the Government give serious consideration to the establishment of that central point of contact?

These are good ideas. Some of the kinds of things about which the Deputy talks are happening. For example, the Department introduced a scheme whereby local authorities could provide grant aid to people who own homes to upgrade them and make them suitable to rent or lease to the local authority. That scheme had limited success and must therefore be reviewed and tweaked. More generally, I note that in the last 12 months, over 2,500 vacant homes have been brought back into use, largely with the support of local authorities and approved housing bodies. Funding is available to allow local authorities to target towns and villages strategically, upgrade them and provide social housing options for relocating families from other areas. We have a very active town and village renewal scheme which is being led energetically by the Minister for Rural and Community Affairs, Deputy Ring. I was with him in Castletownroche this week where we discussed the impact of town and village renewal nationally. A great deal is already available to local authorities and villages and towns if they want to put plans together to provide more housing. There have been some good examples of that. What Deputy Harty requests, however, is a central point within the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government to look at this area strategically and in greater detail. I will ask the Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, to respond to the Deputy directly on that. There is a space for people who want to relocate out of Dublin, Cork, Galway or Limerick where there are pressures on the housing lists to towns and villages which may not be too far away. The management of that is something the Department is willing to look at. However, there is nothing to stop local authorities using their initiative on those kinds of solutions in towns and villages and to look for funding from the Department to take action today. Perhaps, there could be a bit more co-ordination in that regard. I can ask the Minister to talk to Deputy Harty about it, if that would be helpful.

I thank the Tánaiste. That is the very point. Co-ordination is needed. I understand the various grants that are available to upgrade accommodation in towns and villages but there is no national co-ordination point or programme to take things to a higher level and which would be proactive rather than reactive. That is the point I am trying to make. There needs to be a programme which is advertised and promoted. It requires local communities to participate and to want to get involved. I have been speaking to the Peter McVerry Trust and understand it is willing to identify people on its books who would choose to relocate. I am sure Focus Ireland and other housing agencies and local authorities in general would readily identify people who would wish to relocate, to actively promote that programme and to allow them to make contact with local communities where they would have some generational contact. Everybody in Dublin is only one or two generations away from some part of rural Ireland and they still have connections there. They may wish to move back, reignite those connections and be accepted into a community. If one scales this up, two families benefitting in ten villages across 26 counties amounts to 520 families and, probably, several thousand people. It is only a small part of the solution, but it would make huge inroads.

We all recognise that the pressures on the housing market will not be solved by one silver bullet. It is about a combination of lots of solutions which are tailored for different sectors and circumstances. We have changing demographics in Ireland and over the next ten to 20 years, we will see a doubling of the number of people who are 65 years of age and over. That will place major pressures on the kinds of housing we need to design into the future. The approach we have taken to date to the potential of rural towns and villages includes the announcement of a €1 billion fund for rural regeneration. Every six to 12 months, a new round of funding is made available to towns and villages to allow them to tailor their own solutions from the ground up. The Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, has sent me across a note to the effect that the Department is currently reviewing how best to facilitate people who want to move from areas with long housing lists and severe housing pressures to other parts of the country where the opposite may be the case. Those areas may wish to see increases in population and have vacant properties available to facilitate that. I will ask the Minister to send Deputy Harty a briefing note on that.