The Government has become what can only be described as a circular firing squad. Fianna Fáil Deputies are blaming Fine Gael for the housing crisis and Fine Gael Deputies are blaming Fianna Fáil. I would like to settle the dispute between the coalition partners because both points of view are correct. Fianna Fáil crashed the housing market the first time around and Fine Gael then let vulture funds loose on the carcase for a decade with tax incentives and fast-track planning. Now both parties have joined forces in government and have been destroying the housing market.

Two weeks ago, my colleague, Deputy Cian O'Callaghan, stood in this House and told the Tánaiste that 435 apartments in Ashtown, Dublin 15, had been bought in bulk by an investment fund. He expressed concern than an entire generation was being locked out of home ownership and asked the Tánaiste to act immediately to stop funds bulk-buying homes. His response was to accuse the Deputy of being "ideological" and to say the Government had no plans to introduce legislation to rein in investment funds.

If we fast-forward two weeks, another global fund has gobbled up more homes. This time it is 135 homes in Maynooth. During Leaders' Questions yesterday, the Taoiseach professed surprise about this development. He said it was a new departure and that usually funds confine themselves to hoarding properties in cities, not suburban areas. Does the Taoiseach not think young people in Dublin and other cities deserve to own a home? Does he believe the mass acquisition of homes by funds is somehow okay as long as they restrain their purchases to every new build in Dublin and other urban areas? In any event, the Taoiseach was wrong. These funds have been block-buying estates and apartment blocks, and now second-hand homes, in urban areas and the commuter belt. They have been doing this for some time.

Since 2018, such funds have spent €4 billion on residential property in this country. Did anybody in government even notice? The Tánaiste might not understand the Social Democrats ideology but it is really simple. We believe ordinary workers on average salaries should be able to own their own home. We are not disaster capitalists. We do not want to see young people spend their entire lives paying extortionate rents to cuckoo funds that pay very little or almost zero tax on investments. That is the ideology of the Tánaiste and that of Fianna Fáil. Tax loopholes and sweetheart deals for developers and investment funds while ordinary workers and families are sacrificed on the altar of greed and profit is just not acceptable.

Two weeks ago, the Tánaiste was disinterested in funds hoovering up the country's limited housing supply.

The Deputy is over her time.

Does he now deign to care about that? If he does, what will he do about it? Talk is cheap so what action will he take?

With the greatest respect to the Deputy, it is the ideology of everybody in this House that people who work hard, with a decent average or lower than average income, should be able to buy their own home. It is the case that in this country, 65% to 70% of people own their own home. That was not achieved by the Social Democrats; that has been a feature of long-standing policy by Governments led by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. We must ensure that can be a reality for people now in their 20s and 30s, which very clearly it is not.

What is ideologically extreme is the view from some, including, as I understand it, the Social Democrats, that we should have outright bans on some forms of housing and housing investment. That would be a mistake as there would be less housing as a consequence of that. When ideology is put over practicality, we end up with those kinds of results. If that is the policy of the Deputy's party, it is wrong. I nonetheless agree with the Deputy that the objective of all parties in this House should be to make home ownership a reality for people. It should be a reality for people in their 20s and 30s, as it has been for generations that came before.

The responsibility for dealing with the housing crisis lies with the Government now. It does not matter about the past as Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Green Party, now in government together, must work to solve this crisis. In areas like homelessness, we are making good progress and although the number of people in homelessness is still too high, it has been falling for some time now. That is largely down to the Housing First policy initiated by the former Minister with responsibility for housing, Deputy Coveney, and brought through by former Deputy and Minister, Eoghan Murphy, during his time in that ministerial office.

We have seen a substantial increase in the volume of social housing built in recent years in Ireland. There were as few as 600 units built in 2016 and there were up to 6,000 units built in 2019. The rate of building has been hit by the impact of the pandemic but we are heading to the target of providing 12,000 social houses per year. A large proportion of housing now being built in Ireland every year is being built by the State. I do not remember the last time such a percentage of housing being built was social housing. It often goes without comment that so much of the housing now being built in Ireland is social housing. It may be as much as half and the Deputy refuses to acknowledge that.

Investment funds have an appropriate role, which is to finance developments that might not otherwise happen, therefore providing supply that would be lost otherwise. There are people such as developers and construction companies trying to build homes who find it hard to get finance to build development, particularly high-density and apartment developments, and that is where investment funds may have a role to play. We all agree that the cases in Maynooth and Hollystown exemplify the wrong approach, where funds bought most of a substantially complete estate, making it impossible for first-time buyers, upgraders, the local authority or approved housing bodies to do so. That is what we are seeking to change.

It is extraordinary that the Tánaiste did not seem to be aware of this happening right under his nose. Two weeks ago, he denied this was the case or that any action was needed. Yesterday, the Taoiseach also seemed to be taken by surprise by this.

This evening, the Dáil will debate Second Stage of the Social Democrats Bill to help end the practice of the State entering into long-term leasing deals with developers and institutional investors instead of building and purchasing social and affordable homes. That is happening but the Taoiseach again seemed to be unaware of this yesterday. We are proceeding with this Bill because, unlike the Government, we recognise there is a serious problem that must be urgently addressed. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael thought the people would be thrilled when they published their affordable housing Bill and saw €450,000 as the price of an affordable house. The Tánaiste is so out of touch if he thinks that is the case. Prices of €450,000 for a house or €500,000 for an apartment are not affordable by any means.

The Taoiseach told us yesterday he would take action on this. I ask the Tánaiste to spell out if he will support our Bill this evening by introducing the measures in it as a matter of urgency and not simply paying lip service to it.

I may be incorrect but I thought that Bill relates to a different matter, which is the leasing of properties for social housing.

Yes, it does.

That is a different matter.

As I understand it the Government is not opposing that but it is a separate matter and it is wrong to conflate the two.

It is part and parcel of the same thing.

What the Deputy said about affordable housing is a bit misleading. The average home in Ireland changed hands last year for about €270,000. We would envisage that the vast majority of affordable housing scheme properties that are provided would be in and around that figure or lower. There are parts of the country where house prices are high, however, and the false impression and misrepresentation, which is always a tactic the Deputy uses, is to make out that all of the affordable housing scheme houses and apartments will be €400,000. That is not the case at all. Most will be a lot less than that.

The Tánaiste is acting as if the rampage and plunder by cuckoo and vulture funds and investment vehicles - these terms are too polite; they should all just be called bloodsuckers - is some sort of isolated incident or inadvertent mistake that the Government is going to rectify. Why does he not admit the truth? When the Tánaiste was Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport in the Fine Gael and Labour Party Government, the former Minister, Michael Noonan and his officials from the Department of Finance had 65 meetings in 2013 and 2014 with vulture funds where they invited them in to commence the rampage.

In a deliberate policy, the National Asset Management Agency, NAMA, was told to sell off, which it subsequently did, more than €40 billion worth of land and property assets to these bloodsuckers. They have now moved on to buying up new estates as well. The consequence of that is they are almost entirely pricing ordinary working people out of the market to buy their own homes. We have an extraordinary situation that beggars belief. It is so bad that the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage is describing affordable housing as costing €400,000 or €450,000 when one would need an income in excess of €90,000 or €100,000 to be able to afford the affordable houses, never mind the houses that these people are providing at full market price. We have tents littering the city as a result. We have extortionate rents being charged by these same entities in my area of no less than €2,000 per month and up to €3,000 and €3,500 per month. This is a result of a direct and deliberate - and indeed "ideological" to use the Tánaiste's favourite word - policy of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil to facilitate, incentivise and encourage these bloodsuckers.

I want to ask the Tánaiste about the next chapter of all of this, which is the Land Development Agency Bill. It is bad enough that this Government and past Governments have let these people rampage and plunder the private housing sector, whether it was for purchase or rental properties. However, with the Land Development Agency, the Government will allow them to rampage and plunder through the entire public land bank. It will invite them in to do the same thing to the public land bank that they have done in the private housing market. The one thing that could help us address this crisis and deliver public and affordable housing to rent and purchase is by doing it ourselves on our land bank. Far from doing that, the Government will invite those entities in to plunder that land bank with the Land Development Agency Bill. I beg the Tánaiste to stop the madness and to start next week by abandoning the Government's plans with the Land Development Agency.

We were in a different situation ten years ago. There were no homes at all being built in Ireland and there was no property at all moving. The policy solutions that might have been required ten years ago may not be the same as we require now and that may change again. Going back to that period ten years ago misunderstands the situation we faced then when no homes were being built and no property was moving, with all the consequences that arose from that.

As I mentioned in my reply to Deputy Shortall, the average price of a home changing hands last year in Ireland was €270,000. The affordable schemes will be pitching around that figure or lower. The Deputy picked the figure of €400,000 or €450,000 but that is at the top end in a particular area and it is misleading to make out that somehow all, most or even many of the affordable housing scheme homes will be priced in that range.

The purpose of the Land Development Agency is to be a major State intervention in the housing market, using public and private land and buying up parts of land where necessary to access that land and develop it for a mix of social, affordable and private for purchase housing. It is a similar model to the one we had with IDA Ireland, for example, in developing industrial parks, which it was then able to use to entice investment and bring about job creation. That is the model we are pursuing and it is a good one.

What happened ten years ago is important because some of us stood up in this House at the time and begged the then Government not to sell off the NAMA portfolio but instead to use it for social and affordable housing. Had the then Government listened, we would not have the crisis we face now. I am appealing to the Government not to do the same with the Land Development Agency.

The Tánaiste said that €450,000 is at the top end but Dublin, Dún Laoghaire, Galway and Cork are not small places. These are the epicentres of the housing crisis and €450,000, €400,000 or €350,000 is not affordable in anybody's language for the vast majority of workers. How could the level of what is affordable be different in different areas anyway? If it is affordable it is based on people's incomes, not on the area they live in so why are there different caps in different areas? It is because the developers in those areas told the Government that under no circumstances should it sell houses as affordable houses for €200,000 or €300,000 if the developers are selling them for €400,000 and €500,000 on the open market. The Government is dancing to the tune of the developers and the result is that affordable housing will not be affordable, even on public land, which the Government will let these vultures, cuckoos and bloodsuckers plunder.

It is great rhetoric but there is little reality behind that. It has been the case since time began that houses and apartments cost different amounts in different places. There are places in the country, in Dublin and in the world-----

Not on public land.

-----where there is a higher demand for housing and where there is a lower demand for housing.

Not on public land.

There are places where there is no public land and in those places the land cost impacts on the price of affordable housing. It is not that affordable housing will only be built on public land. It will also require the acquisition of land in some cases and it may be built on private land as well.

I will go back to the NAMA portfolio, which was not mentioned by the Deputy. It is the crucial point that he left out. Why would somebody leave the crucial point out of one's argument? The crucial point about the NAMA portfolio, properties and land is that they were all held against borrowings. In order to pay down those borrowings the land was sold off. If the land had not been sold off those borrowings would have fallen onto the taxpayer, the Exchequer and the public balance sheet.

They would be generating revenue for the State.

They would have had to be serviced, at the cost of public services or higher taxes for ordinary people.