How can anyone who lives in urban centres, such as my constituency of Dublin Central, see the Taoiseach’s announcement yesterday to exempt apartments from stamp duty and planning as anything other than an abandonment of our city centres as a place in which to live or to aspire to own an apartment and raise a family? I cannot for the life of me understand why we can have one particular set of rules for suburbia and another for city centres. This was an abandonment and a white flag was raised by the Minister, Deputy Donohoe, and it must be tackled.

I have dealt with this earlier. This is not an abandonment of anybody. There is a key issue about the supply of apartments and that is one that has to be balanced. We could do what people want and increase taxation or do this or that.

All of that could, cumulatively, reduce-----

Lower rents.

-----the supply of apartments on the market. However, what we have done now with the 10% stamp duty is made a far better situation for first-time buyers of houses and duplexes. We are going to keep this-----

What about apartments?

We need to build more apartments and we need to-----

When?

We need to work on the viability of apartments.

Lower rents.

The cost-rental scheme will be important in that regard and the affordability-----

The Taoiseach should look up when he walks outside. It is more than €2,000 for each of those apartments.

The affordability initiatives that have been undertaken by the Minister will help, but we have an awful lot more to do-----

It was a white flag.

-----and we are not going to do it if we end up in-----

It was a white flag.

------endless ideological warfare, which seems to be the only-----

Your ideology has led to the housing crisis.

------proposition coming from the Deputy and others.

Your ideology has led to the housing crisis. The hands-off, developer-led approach has led to the housing crisis.

The bottom line is that we need more supply. I have------

I thank the Taoiseach. The time is up and we need to move on.