The housing crisis is deepening and Government efforts are failing to impact significantly on it. The cost of housing is growing at twice the rate of average earnings across the country. Rent prices have soared by 8% nationally. In Dublin, the cost of rent makes up more than half of the minimal living costs. At 68%, which is a stark number, the rate of home ownership is now the lowest since 1971. The younger generation, essentially, have been locked out of home ownership and have lost confidence in ever being able to afford to buy a house. The new average before people can buy a house is now 35. In the 1990s it was 26 years of age. When Deputy Varadkar become Taoiseach two years ago the number of children homeless was at 1,881. Today, the figure is over double that at 3,794. I recall the then Minister for Housing, Deputy Coveney, promising in June 2016 that child homelessness would be over by the end of that year.

This, by any yardstick, is a litany of failure. Plan after plan has been produced and they have not worked in accordance with the targets set in each plan. There was an over-reliance on the free market, the private market, to solve all the issues. I suggest that over-reliance has backfired and failed.

There have been attempts to engineer a change from home ownership to rental. The current budget alone in terms of rental schemes is anywhere up to €900 million, an extraordinary figure. It is in the billions of euro when one goes back over the last five or six years. In terms of house building, either council houses or affordable houses, it has dwarfed any of that. That was a clear policy to engineer and to contrive people to move away from ever owning homes to renting. All the initiatives that were announced from rapid build, the affordable rental schemes, the repair and leasing scheme to the home loan scheme have failed spectacularly in the targets they set. They have not reached their targets. They have been bedevilled with bureaucracy, lack of urgency and delayed delivery. Rent pressure zones have now been extended to 19 areas but rents continue to soar.

Will the Taoiseach answer clearly when does he expect we will have a situation where children will no longer have to live in hotel rooms or emergency accommodation and will have access to public housing? When will we see meaningful progress in the provision of affordable homes for people? Does the Taoiseach accept that home ownership is no longer attainable for young people under the current policies and that they have no confidence in ever being able to buy a house?

The Government acknowledges the enormous challenges we face as a country when it comes to housing. All of us feel particularly strongly about the fact that there are families living in emergency accommodation. While the family hubs are much better than hotels and bed and breakfast accommodation they are by no means a long-term solution. It is our objective to reduce the number of families experiencing homelessness, living in emergency accommodation, month on month, year on year. There was a slight fall in the number last month but we want to see it continuing to fall very month into the future. We want to minimise the number of people who end up in emergency accommodation and, if people end up in it, we want to make sure it is for a very short period of time, for weeks or maybe a few months but certainly not for years.

I do not think it is possible for anyone to say there will never be anyone who has to go into emergency accommodation. There always have been a certain number of people in emergency accommodation for one reason or another, particularly people who become homeless suddenly who were not on the housing list, but it should not be the type of figures it is now. We want to make sure it starts falling and continues to fall.

With respect to housing, I am somebody who is very committed to home ownership. This Government believes in home ownership. As the Deputy pointed out 68% to 70% of people in Ireland own their own home, which is much higher than in most European countries. I know others prefer a European housing solution based on renting for life, a public housing and social housing-based solution. I believe in home ownership and that people should be able to own their own home, that that is a socially desirable thing. In order to deliver high levels of home ownership, we need the private market and the private sector because it has never been the case that Governments build houses for people to own. Governments build houses for people to rent-----

They eventually bought them out when matters improved. That was the model.

-----for those who are not able to own their own house. That is why we need the private market so that people can purchase and own their own homes. I want that 70% home ownership to be a reality for people in the 20s and 30s. As to what are we doing about it, there is the help-to-buy scheme which has already benefitted 10,000 people, mostly people in their 20s and 30s, helping them to get a deposit to buy their own home. It will help many more people in the future. Approximately 1,000 more people have been helped with the Rebuilding Ireland home loan to get a low interest rate home loan to be able to buy their own home.

The other area is supply. In the past 12 months, 22,000 new homes have been added to our housing stock. That is 22,000 new houses or apartments. We are meeting our targets in terms of supply. If there was a way to do it quicker I guarantee the Deputy we would do it. Given from where we have come with a collapse in the financial and construction sectors, we can only ramp up supply so quickly. This year we will see between 22,000 and 25,000 new homes built, with next year probably hitting higher than that again, and we will get to the point where the additional supply is meeting the demand. We are seeing some progress already because of the additional housing supply with house prices levelling off and even falling in this city.

The Taoiseach's comments regarding homeless children living in emergency accommodation are quite depressing. He said there was a slight fall in the number. I am not talking about the situation we had in the past where a very small number of people were homeless for a variety of reasons. We are talking about families who ordinarily in previous times would have had access to a council house within a reasonable period of time but who are now living in hotel accommodation for a prolonged period of time. We know the psychological impact of that on children in terms of their development. The Taoiseach has offered no hope here this morning in terms of making any significant dent in the numbers who are living in emergency accommodation with all of the societal damage and potential impact of that on those families and children.

At 68%, home ownership is at the lowest level since 1971. That is the reality. Despite what the Taoiseach said in terms of his stated position, the reality is there was a significant shift in the past five to six years towards the housing assistance payment, HAP, scheme model and various rental approaches which have absorbed huge amounts of money with less emphasis on house building, particularly the building of council houses in terms of broader social housing areas. The delayed delivery on all of those has been quite shocking given the urgency of the situation. Rent prices have continued to soar. There is no point in saying we aspire to homeownership if the nuts and bolts that govern that are not dealt with by Government.

To date, they have not been dealt with in the context of people's capacity to afford to buy homes. The Taoiseach might indicate the progress that has been made in terms of the affordable homes scheme.

I call on the Taoiseach to respond. We have exceeded the time. We cannot continue like this.

I will ensure that the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, provides the Deputy with an update on the affordable homes scheme.

The Minister will be providing one for himself first.

As the Deputy will be aware, the scheme is going towards a shared equity model. We will provide the Deputy with more information on that.

Has the Taoiseach not had it?

I am advised that the level of home ownership fell faster under Fianna Fáil than it has under the current Government. It is worth referring to that point. We really should not forget from where we are coming. We should not forget what happened ten to 12 years ago on Fianna Fáil's watch. When Deputy Micheál Martin's party was in office, we had a boom-and-bust cycle in construction. As a result, the industry was totally destroyed and hundreds of thousands of workers left their jobs and had to emigrate.

Eight years later.

That was a long time ago. We do not need a history lesson.

The banking sector collapsed and was unable to lend people mortgages for a prolonged period.

The banks still are not working.

We had, on Fianna Fáil's watch, ghost estates, Priory Hall, problems with mica, hundreds of thousands of people in negative equity-----

Fine Gael builders.

-----and hundreds of thousands of others in mortgage arrears. Deputy Micheál Martin is not in a position to lecture or advise anyone on housing.

Fine Gael was asking them to spend more at the time.

Let us think of the children.

Please.

What was Fine Gael doing at the time?

Not a word about the children.

There has to be some order. If there is, Deputies may get an opportunity to contribute..

The Taoiseach does not care about the children.

It is all just politics. There is nothing about the children. Suffer little children.

If they are orderly, they might have a better chance of getting it.

He must remember that he is the Taoiseach.