I would like to raise again the issue of housing. I am very conscious that as the light at the end of the tunnel gets a little bit brighter for people, we are beginning to consider what life, and Ireland, will look like once the pandemic passes and the public emergency is over. It is very encouraging that, despite everything people have been through in the past year, they still have that sense of hope and that sense of appetite for a better and fairer Ireland.

Long before the Covid emergency, people faced very many profound crises because of bad politics and bad government. Many of those crises deepened during the pandemic but the one that really stands out is the housing emergency, alongside the mental health emergency, which colleagues discussed this morning. When the Taoiseach came to office, he said that his Government would fix housing. He came to office on the back of an election campaign that was very heavily focused on the housing crisis. However, since coming to office, what we have seen is more of the same, persisting with the same kinds of developer-led policies that created the mess we have in the first place. Any claim of progress that might be made by the Government or the Taoiseach is now cruelly exposed by the shocking numbers of tents we see around the city centre of Dublin and the heart-wrenching image that we have seen of a four-year old child sitting on a crate here in the capital city eating her dinner on the side of the street. It is not the first time we have seen a child eating his or her dinner in similar circumstances.

This is the sharpest edge of the bad policy and bad government that have seen house prices go up and up. Indeed, the CSO tells us that house prices in Dublin have increased by a staggering 96% in the past nine years. These are not mansions, by the way; these are modest family homes. Meanwhile, extortionate rents continue to soar. In fact, rents are so high that many first-time buyers struggle to save a deposit. How on earth could any person save for a deposit when rent is €2,000 or more a month? It is a nightmarish trap in which people find themselves caught. As a result, an entire generation is locked out of owning their own home. This generation have had to put their lives on hold and curtail their aspirations because Government continues to choose policies that make the situation worse.

Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of things is that it does not have to be this way. We need to build affordable housing that people can actually afford. That means the State leading from the front. It means direct investment and it means dropping the developer-led approach that is still in evidence, for example, in the Government's shared equity scheme. We need to intervene on behalf of renters. We have to ensure that evictions remain banned for the foreseeable future. Above all, we need to ensure that rents are cut and increases in rents are banned.

I ask the Taoiseach to guarantee, and to offer to work with the rest of us to ensure, that we see a cut in rents and any increase in rents banned. Rents need to be frozen.

I have to disagree with the Deputy's presentation of the issue. Fianna Fáil has been in a coalition Government with the Fine Gael Party and the Green Party for ten months, having been out of government for ten years. We have made housing a major priority of Government, with our colleagues. The Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, has applied great energy to a range of measures designed to deal with the housing issue and homelessness. The photograph the Deputy referred to is a very upsetting one, but progress has been made on homelessness in the past ten months. Family homelessness has declined by approximately 42% and homelessness overall by 19%, but more needs to be done. Progress has been made in regard to homelessness but we are determined to do more and to expand the Housing First programme, which has been effective in reducing homelessness, particularly for single adults. That is something on which the Minister is very focused.

We want to create opportunities for people to own their own homes. We also want to create opportunities for people to get faster access to social housing, with the State taking a key role in building, and facilitating the building of, social houses. A total of €3.3 billion was allocated in the budget, which is an unprecedented sum, to make sure we can start to build the largest social housing programme in the history of the State.

Over the lifetime of the Government it will result in 50,000 new social houses being built. We were hit in the first three months of the year, which the Deputy has not acknowledged. We had to shut down construction significantly because of Covid-19 and the third wave. We allowed some social housing to stay open to complete projects. We are very determined in respect of the social housing agenda to build 12,750 new social houses this year. That was the target prior to the shutting down of construction for the first few months of the year. Some 9,500 of those were new-build homes. We are committed and we will do everything we can to accelerate that. We are going to look at a void programme again this year, like we did last year. As soon as we came into office we went straight at it and got close to 3,500 houses back into use through allocation of funding to local authorities for the voids.

The new equity scheme that Deputy McDonald talks about will help 2,000 people to be in a position to buy their own homes this year, if we can get that through with the legislation. A new affordable purchase scheme with the State directly building affordable homes is another key initiative to help people to buy their own homes. There is a retained and expanded help-to-buy scheme. The Deputy talks about giving people the opportunity to own their own homes and to aspire to that. Yet, she opposed the help-to-buy scheme and continues to oppose the shared equity scheme while making claims about it that are completely exaggerated in terms of its impact. The launch of the Land Development Agency is an important part of policy, as is the new cost-rental scheme that the Minister has introduced, which will create wider options for people this year in respect of the rental area. We want to expand that significantly.

There is a comprehensive programme here. It is unprecedented in scale. No shortage of resources has been allocated across all strands of the housing area. I appeal to the Deputy that on the various local authorities where her party members are represented to stop opposing housing projects. Let us have a consensus across all the parties in the House that we facilitate projects now and get them going. That is important in terms of giving people opportunities. There is no point in standing up in the House and saying we want people to have an opportunity to own homes and get access to social housing if projects are delayed and delayed and opposed and opposed and nothing gets built where projects are shovel-ready. That really is a disservice to people.

A person does not have to walk very far from here to see the scourge of homelessness in the city of Dublin. Indeed, anyone can go into any of our cities or towns throughout the country to see that this is a reality. Rents are sky-high and housing is unaffordable, especially to younger people and people on average or lower wages. The Taoiseach was in government ten years ago. When he was in government he and the Administration of the time wrecked the housing market. The then Government created a property bubble that burst and devastated the country at the time. Ten years later, we see history repeating itself. Developers are taken care of and landlords are taken care of, but younger people and people on low incomes are all left behind. Home ownership remains beyond their reach. Rents are crucifyingly high. I want to ask the Taoiseach again. Does he accept that rents are too high? Does he accept they need to come down? Will the Taoiseach build a consensus with us? Will he act to ensure that we have rents cut and that we ban rent increases? They are straight questions for the Taoiseach.

I will put straight questions to Deputy McDonald. Why does she continue to oppose housing projects? Why does she continue to oppose schemes and initiatives that would give young people an opportunity to own their own homes? You keep on opposing such initiatives and undermining them all the time. There is complete incoherence and inconsistency in the Deputy's approach to housing. She ignores the fact that this year the allocation for social housing was the largest ever. Over €3.3 billion is being allocated to housing this year with a suite of measures being introduced. Homelessness is a priority for this Government. The number of people in emergency accommodation has fallen by 19% in the past year. The number in family homelessness has decreased by almost 42%. We need to do more. Homelessness is a blight on society and we need more supply. We need to match urgency of action with the rhetoric that we consistently hear. I do not think, at times, Sinn Féin matches urgency of action with rhetoric when it comes to getting housing projects off the ground.