Fáilte roimh ar ais, a Theachtaí.

Cuirim fáilte roimh gach duine.

Yesterday was a difficult day right across the island. There were record numbers of deaths North and South and it is only appropriate to express our sympathy to those who have been bereaved. The mother and baby homes report was also published. We will have an opportunity to discuss that report in due course today.

For now, I wish to discuss the issue of housing. In Fianna Fáil's election manifesto last year, it promised 50,000 affordable homes over five years if in government. It also promised that an affordable housing scheme would deliver homes to buy for less than €250,000. When the Taoiseach appointed Deputy Darragh O'Brien as Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage in July, the Minister promised to have the scheme in place by September. Before the budget, he stated that he would publish the scheme with targets and legislation. However, the budget came and went with no affordable housing scheme launched. We were then told that the scheme would be ready in the autumn, but that deadline was also missed. At its final meeting of 2020, a memo was rushed to the Cabinet. There was no legislation, no target. The scheme has yet to be finalised. All the Cabinet agreed was that, at some point in 2021, the Government will introduce a significantly flawed and controversial shared equity loan scheme. That was not in Fianna Fáil's election manifesto. In fact, it is a policy that was drafted for the Government by the construction industry. Last March, Irish Institutional Property, which represents 14 of the biggest players in the industry, published a shared equity loan proposal. IBEC's property wing, Property Industry Ireland, published a similar proposal last May. The proposal agreed by the Cabinet was almost identical to these. Housing policy being directed by wealthy property developers and big landlords is what we have while ordinary people continue to live out the nightmare that is this housing crisis.

Many young people have given up any hope of ever owning their own homes. Gone is Fianna Fáil's promise to deliver affordable homes for less than €250,000. Gone is its promise to deliver 10,000 affordable houses to buy every year. Instead, the Government is going to saddle working people with large debts so that they can buy unaffordable homes. Its scheme will offer a first-time buyer a shared equity loan of up to €100,000 on top of a mortgage to buy a home to the value of €400,000. Worse still, if the value of the home increases, so does the equity stake. This means that the buyer will owe the State even more. Shared equity loan schemes push up prices. Everyone knows that. Even officials in the Departments of the Taoiseach and Public Expenditure and Reform have advised the Government of this fact. In email correspondence dealing with the shared equity loan scheme that was released to our housing spokesperson, Deputy Ó Broin, Mr. Robert Watt is reported as saying that the property industry wanted an equity scheme because it would push up prices. He was not alone in that regard. Another official stated that the provision might not be targeted at those most in need. A third stated that it would push up prices in a supply-constrained environment.

Why is the Taoiseach allowing lobbyists for the property industry to write Government housing policy? Why has he ignored the advice of his own officials? Why has he abandoned his election promise to deliver affordable homes?

On the first point, we are not allowing anybody to write our housing policies. Generally speaking, I think the budget was a landmark budget in terms of housing, with a €3.1 billion allocation and the largest amount of social housing - to be built this year - on record. Obviously, Covid will interrupt that this month. Be under no illusion - we are taking a multi-strand approach to housing.

There is strong investment in social housing in order to address homelessness and deal with the long waiting lists for such housing. We are accelerating our efforts in that regard, which began prior to the budget in terms of getting voids back into operation and providing more than 2,500 local authority houses through investment. This year will be quite dramatic in terms of the social housing output. This will be the result of the prioritisation afforded to social housing in the budget and the allocation of unprecedented funding to achieve that output.

Affordable housing and home ownership are significant planks in terms of the Government's commitment in this area. That is why we are continuing with the help-to-buy scheme and why we enhanced it in the July stimulus package. I know that Sinn Féin opposed this. It seems that the party is opposed to the concept of home ownership in general. It has opposed many motions and voted against help-to-buy initiatives. In addition, it is against the equity scheme before it has even been established.

The objective behind the equity scheme is try to give young people the chance to buy homes and to enhance the affordability of homes. Matters are extremely difficult for them in this regard in the current circumstances and we are conscious of that. We need a balanced approach and a suite of methods to deal with the housing crisis from homelessness in terms of the allocation of specific resources, reducing the amount of emergency accommodation and the number of people in such accommodation, building more social housing through approved housing bodies and local authorities and developing a strong affordable home dimension in order that younger people and those who are working will be in a position to own homes in the localities in which they reside. Work in this regard is under way. The Minister brought the outlines of legislation to the Government. That is being worked on and the various inputs from different officials and different policy perspectives will be assessed. The overall objective is to help people to be in a position to afford to buy homes.

The vast bulk of housing being built is social housing or individual homes. There are no large developers involved in building massive housing estates right now. That is clear from the figures. We need a sense of perspective when language is being bandied about. We need far more activity in the housing market than we currently have if we are to get to the 33,000 to 35,000 houses per annum the Economic and Social Research Institute estimates will be required in the coming years to deal with the housing crisis in a sustainable way.

I am under absolutely no illusions, nor are the Taoiseach's officials, that the proposed shared equity loan scheme will have the effect of forcing up prices and saddling those young people and working families to whom he refers with even more debt. It seems clear that Fianna Fáil has learned nothing from the past and that we are back to the bad old days of developer-led housing policy in which the only people who will benefit from the Taoiseach's shared equity loan scheme are the developers. The scheme will lock in already unaffordable prices and push them up even further. Of course, developers will be laughing all the way to the bank but young people and working families will face huge levels of debt.

The Taoiseach should have kept his election promise and funded local authorities to directly deliver the huge volume of genuinely affordable homes that we need. He could listen to his officials but instead he does what those in Fianna Fáil have always done, namely, listen to the big developers. What big developers want, big developers get. I ask the Taoiseach again why he has ignored the advice of his officials. Does he accept that he has been given the advice that the Government's shared equity loan scheme is dangerous and flawed and will push up prices?

I know what the Deputy is doing. She is engaging in a political branding exercise rather than making a serious intervention on housing and housing policy.

Sinn Féin seems to be opposed to all home ownership initiatives by this Government and by previous Governments.

Fianna Fáil did one thing in the history of this country. It was responsible for the massive social housing programme of the 1930s and right through the decades to the 1960s, in particular, that dramatically transformed living conditions for many people. Others were involved too. Under this Government, we are determined to build 50,000 social houses over the next five years, working with local authorities and approved housing bodies to do that. That will be very challenging but the funding has been allocated to realise that. In addition to that, we are designing an affordability shared equity scheme to target supports at those in need and to limit inflationary risk with regional price caps. This will take appropriate account of house prices and household income.

We have a massive housing crisis and we need to reflect on the fact that various schemes coming before local authorities and so on are being delayed and being voted against. All the while, so many people out there desperately need housing. We need to put some of the ideological rhetoric to one side and concentrate on getting houses built in this country. The rate they were built at last year is not sufficient to deal with the crisis.

In the Taoiseach's reply to Deputy McDonald, he was keen to grab credit for Fianna Fáil for things it did in the 1930s. I hope he will be as quick today to accept responsibility for what Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the institutions of the church and the State did to tens of thousands of innocent women and children who were imprisoned and who suffered gross abuse. The mother and baby homes report alone documents 9,000 victims, although there are undoubtedly thousands of more infants and women not covered by it, which is an issue in itself, who suffered obscenely.

I have not had a chance to go through the thousands of pages of this report but I have read the significant parts. It is my job to read stuff like this. One can only imagine what many of the survivors must feel like, faced with the whirlwind of commentary on the report. At this point, my feeling is that the report and the official political commentary coming from Government are beginning to look like a sham, an insult and a whitewash of the gross crimes that were committed against thousands of women and infants.

The report and some of the Taoiseach's comments yesterday seem to very consciously seek to diminish the culpability of the institutions of the church and the State and to disperse responsibility for the crimes that were committed onto society as a whole. There should be apologies for that as well immediately. Some of the passages in this report are offensive: in trying to shift the blame away from the institutions of the church and State, in trying to create a hierarchy of the severity of abuse between one institution and another; and in the constant refrain of there being no evidence of abuse. Is 9,000 children dying in proportions way beyond the number of infants who were dying at that time in society as a whole not in itself evidence of abuse? Was it not in fact an imprisonment sentence for every single woman who was forced to go in there? The report says there was no evidence of illegal adoptions when in fact we have evidence. There seems to be a systematic attempt to not treat as evidence the testimonies of the survivors.

I thank Deputy Boyd Barrett. The time is up.

I hope the Taoiseach will explain to us what the apology is for. Will it be a sincere apology? Will it be an apology that results in actions that give justice and redress to the survivors of the mother and baby homes?

I thank the Deputy for his contribution. For my own part, my remarks and my statement yesterday in no way sought to diminish the role of the churches, or indeed the State, and any reading of them would confirm that. I spoke about the perverse moral code overseen by the church that in my view was responsible for this in terms of its attitude to sexual morality, for example, which was at the heart of forcing mothers into mother and baby homes. I will deal with this in substance in the statements later and in the apology. I just want to be very clear. I am somewhat concerned that people are endeavouring to present my statement yesterday in a certain light, and that is not accurate. I equally believe the State clearly failed and I will be dealing with that too. What happened was shameful and was shocking.

On the report itself, I would not describe it as a sham and as an insult; the Deputy is entitled to do so. While he might wish to do so for a reason, the Deputy needs to be careful in using the phrase, "there seems to be a systematic" approach. There is not. I had no involvement, good, bad or indifferent, with the commission. I did not meet any member of the commission. I did not meet any of the commissioners. That has to be accepted in good faith. There has been no involvement between the Government and the commission. The commission is fully independent in the discharge of its duty and it is wrong and is wronging the commissioners to say what the Deputy has said.

On reading their report and their recommendations, the commissioners are very clear that the mothers should not have ended up in the county homes or in the mother and baby homes. They have unearthed a comprehensive amount of material. They have also given voice to those who were forced into the homes, to those who resided in the homes and children who experienced life in the homes as well. Obviously, I will deal with this at greater length shortly.

I just want to be clear that nothing I said yesterday or today in any way is an attempt to diminish the responsibility of church or State.

I thank the Taoiseach. The time is up.

No doubt the commission brought out a whole range of issues and actions speak louder than words. The most important work we have to do in this House in the immediate future is the implementation in terms of the legislation which the previous Dáil was not in a position to get through.

The most important action that can be taken is to put the survivors' needs, wishes, feelings, sensitivities and objectives at the centre of this process and to date that has not happened. In fact, they were further insulted with the leak that came out at the weekend. As for being given this report only 24 hours before there is to be an apology, we do not even know what is being apologised for.

I am sorry to say that some of the phrases in the executive summary are unacceptable - they should be withdrawn - in trying to displace blame and responsibility from the institutions of the church and State and somehow disperse them onto something called "society as a whole". There was an element of that in what the Taoiseach stated yesterday and he should apologise for it.

It is not acceptable. These were gross crimes.

Thank you, Deputy. The time is up.

Every single woman who went into these institutions was in effect a prisoner. It was officially sanctioned. There was criminal negligence on the part of the institutions of the church, Government, local authorities and so on at the time.

Deputy, the time is up.

There needs to be an honest owning up to that. The survivors need to be put at the absolute centre of this. Even the webinar I heard yesterday was a bit of sham in terms of the disappointment the survivors felt.

Deputy, you have made your point.

It will be a survivor-led response to the commission. The commission was independent. No politician had any hand, act or role in the deliberations of the commission itself. The Deputy needs to accept that. I hope he was not implying that when he used the phrase "systematic attempt". It is important that this sort of thinking does not gain ground. That is not fair and it is not right. It is not fair to the commissioners in particular.

How would the Deputy define society? We are all society. All of us are part of a society in how we interact with the State and the church. The influence and control of the institution of the church and religious orders were central to this in terms of the response of families. What screams out of the report is that the priest was sent for, the doctor was sent for, the nun was sent for.

Thank you, Taoiseach.

I can deal with that more comprehensively later.