The Government had two options last night - to propose a meaningful plan to stop cuckoo funds snapping up family homes and pushing ordinary homebuyers out of the market or to tinker around the edges with measures that would have no real impact on the funds and not fix the problem faced by people desperately seeking to put an affordable roof over their heads. The Government made its choice, and we again see that wealthy investment funds and big developers always come out on top with Fianna Fáil.

People had low expectations of what the Government would do last night, given that it has supported these funds for years, but it has defied even those low expectations. It has done the bare minimum. The proposal to pitch stamp duty at 10% is too low. These wealthy investment funds will easily absorb that additional cost across their long-term investments. Stamp duty is the only tax measure the Government has touched. Some of these funds are the largest residential landlords in the State, yet they do not pay a cent on their rental incomes. One fund, IRES, paid zero in tax on the €75 million that it generated in rents last year, yet the Government will still allow such funds to get away with that while they charge our people extortionate, eye-watering rents. It is little wonder that IRES's share price rose by 2.6% overnight following the Government's announcement.

The Government has excluded homes that are not houses. Apartments have been left out. That is half of all homes built in Dublin last year and six out of seven homes in the city overall. It is open season on those. The Government has essentially waved the white flag of surrender and abandoned people in the cities and suburbs to the extortionate rents of these investor funds, not just here in Dublin, but in other places such as the Taoiseach's city of Cork. Even where the Government has introduced so-called controls, they have no retrospective effect, meaning they will not make a blind bit of difference to the 80,000 planning permissions already under way. That is another 80,000 houses that homebuyers should have been able to make a pitch for, but they will now lose out to the funds. The cuckoo funds breathed a sigh of relief last night.

What the Government has proposed is a recipe for failure. The Taoiseach knows that these measures will not work because they are designed not to work. There is an acid test for the Government's proposal. First, will it reduce the rip-off rents that people pay? The answer is "No". Second, will it reduce house prices? The answer is "No". Third, will it stop investment cuckoo funds buying up family homes? The answer is "No". People expected their Government to step in and stop these funds in their tracks. Instead, what they got was a cop-out. The Government may try to play people who are struggling to buy a home for fools, but they will not be taken in by this.

Last night, the Government had the opportunity to do the right thing, but it wasted that opportunity. I am asking it to do the right thing today. Do what will work, end all of the tax advantages for these funds, include apartments in these measures, and ensure that measures can be applied retrospectively to stop cuckoos snapping up the 80,000 homes that should and must go to ordinary homebuyers.

I think the Deputy's response is now the typical Sinn Féin response - oppose everything, prevaricate, delay and endeavour to exploit the housing crisis for its own political ends and electoral gain as opposed to coming up with real solutions that matter out there. Our fundamental concern is with young purchasers and other people to enable them to be in a position to buy houses at affordable rates.

Last night's measures will be effective in that regard. The stamp duty going to 10% is much broader and more effective than the UK situation that Sinn Féin has cited, which, of course, applies to houses that are valued at more than £500,000. That illustrates the lack of detail and attempt to obfuscate, which is now part and parcel of the Sinn Féin presentation on housing.

It is remarkable that for the past number of months, the Sinn Féin leader has come in here and attacked investment funds and, week after week, attacked developers and so on, saying that it is all developer-led. What happened last evening? Her party's housing spokesman was on "Prime Time" appealing to all and sundry and saying the party wants more developers. "I welcome developers", he said, and he acknowledged there was a role for investment funds. Sinn Féin is having it each and every way. Which is it, Deputy McDonald? What is the true nature of Sinn Féin housing policy? There are gaps everywhere in the policy and she is not strong on the detail of it. She keeps coming out with big figures for this and that but they are not really grounded in reality in terms of providing housing for people on the ground.

Let us take the scheme the Minister launched this morning in Clondalkin, involving more than 1,200 houses. Sinn Féin held that up for a long time on the basis that it wanted 100% public housing on public lands. The party is very weak on the role of the private sector in getting houses built. It is very weak on the supply question. Its proposals would damage supply in housing and reduce the number of units available to people. The reality is that we are not building enough houses and apartments in this country. Just announcing a figure, as Sinn Féin does, and saying, "Oh, we will do 40,000 this year, just like that", is not grounded in reality, as Deputy McDonald knows. However, that does not matter because her party is not about solving the crisis. It is about exploiting the crisis. That is its agenda at council level and national level and in public discourse.

Sinn Féin opposes everything. It opposed the help to buy scheme, which has helped 22,000 ordinary people to buy houses. It opposed the Land Development Agency Bill on some narrow ideological basis, even though it will give us the engine and the leverage to get houses built in this country. It opposed the shared equity scheme. It opposed 16 out of 21 development motions on Dublin City Council. The list goes on. Where is the constructive engagement? Where are the real policies from Sinn Féin? I do not see them. What it is proposing in terms of an alternative proposal to the one the Government came up with last night, presented by the Ministers, Deputy Darragh O'Brien and Donohoe, would reduce supply. There are issues in terms of apartments and we acknowledge that. There are issues around financing developments and builders. We need private builders building housing estates and apartments. This is just one measure. The measure is about enabling people to buy houses and duplexes on housing estates and the funds will not compete with them. It is a good structured measure that people feel is sensible and will not have the negative consequence of reducing the supply of apartments in cities, which we need.

Let me give the Taoiseach some detail and move from the general to the specific to illustrate how flawed the Government's approach is. There is a sale happening as we speak that will see the largest private rental sector portfolio ever put to the market go to sale. It is being developed by Marlet and represents 2,000 homes across six locations here in Dublin: in Harold's Cross, Howth, Dundrum and Lime Street and on the south side docks at Grand Canal. These 2,000 homes will go to private investors. The process is under way. The Government introduced nothing to ensure that young first-time buyers or other homebuyers can get access to purchasing and owning these houses. The Taoiseach says he is for homeownership, yet everything the Government does either locks people out of access to homes because of affordability or locks them into an endless cycle of extortionate rack-renting from international funds.

The Deputy's time is up.

I will repeat our positive policies and I would like answers on them.

Please, Deputy. The time is up.

We propose to end the tax advantages to these funds. We want to ensure that apartments are included in any and all protections and make sure, crucially, that the protections can be applied retrospectively. If the Taoiseach does not do those things, then he is leaving people in the lurch.

Please, Deputy.

Those are the facts.

We need a rental market. Does the Deputy not get that? In addition to other markets, we need a rental market. We need more supply. We need affordable houses and more social houses. Last night is just one measure in regard to one area. The Government is coming up with a range of initiatives in housing, the most important being substantial allocation of funding for the largest ever social housing programme over the next five years. We want to provide 50,000 social houses. The Government has provided €690 million in the 2021 budget for affordability, including for the first national cost rental scheme, which will provide homes at 25% below market price. Those are the kinds of positive measures we are introducing and the Deputy is voting against. Why is she voting against good measures that will provide affordable housing to ordinary people? The affordable housing Bill will do just that. It will introduce the first scheme of direct State-built affordable houses. A total of €310 million has been allocated for the serviced sites fund to deliver approximately 6,200 homes.

The Taoiseach's time is up.

There is a range of initiatives the Government has brought forward and the Deputy has opposed every single one of them.