The Green Party has long campaigned for affordable homes. It promised to invest in large-scale affordable housing developments and reuse vacant stock for affordable homes, thereby revitalising our urban centres and tackling climate change. The Green Party continually promotes compact growth and rightly advocates for the 15-minute city. Yet, the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, and his colleagues are part of a Government that is actively undermining these policies. That Government is allowing big institutional investors to snap up thousands of family homes and denying would-be buyers from realising their dream of owning homes. It is also allowing these institutional investors to charge sky-high rents, which is squeezing more and more working people out of our city centres.

The planning and tax measures announced last week will do nothing to solve these problems. In fact, the exclusion of apartments from either measure will make matters worse. Are apartments not homes? Do we not want people to rent and buy affordable apartments in our city centres? On Thursday last, the Minister told the Dáil: "The market is not working ... There has to be a radical change and we will help steer that change from within government." Only days later, however, we learned that not only is it allowing big institutional investors buy up family homes, the Government is actually funding them to do this. Home Building Finance Ireland was set up by Government to fund medium-sized builders to build and deliver mid-priced homes. The Minister for Finance, Deputy Donohoe, is the main shareholder and yet over the past 12 months - with the full knowledge of his Department - he has given €264 million of taxpayers' money to big developers to build almost 1,000 homes. Home Building Finance Ireland and the Department of Finance knew that all of these homes would be sold to big institutional investors which would charge extortionate rents.

Last week, the Tánaiste told the Dáil there may have been only one case or a handful of cases where Home Building Finance Ireland invested in build-to-let investments. Now, of course, we know this is not true. In the past year, 30 Home Building Finance Ireland loans, totalling more than 56% of the homes it is financing to be built, have gone to big institutional investors. What in God's name would the Minister do to allow taxpayers' money to be used to fund wealthy developers build and sell homes that will then be rented out? Why is this money not being used to build homes and apartments for working people to rent and buy at genuinely affordable prices, as the Minister promised in his election manifesto? Will the Minister give a commitment that the Government will immediately cease using taxpayers' money in this way and instead invest the money in the large-scale delivery of affordable homes for working people? The current level of investment by the Government in affordable purchase and affordable cost rental homes is derisory. This is not just the view of the Opposition, it is the view of every independent agency. When will the Government stop allowing taxpayers' money to be used to invest in homes for funds and when will it start to invest in homes for working people?

The housing crisis is at the top of the Government's agenda. We now have to apply the same cross-governmental approach we applied to Covid to housing because it is the real crisis of our time, particularly for young people. The Government is committed to doing everything we can to meet this crisis. It is a multifaceted problem. There is not one simple cure-all solution that will get us out of this. We will require a range of different initiatives. It will be in the delivery of social housing, the delivery of accommodation that people buy and the delivery of rental accommodation, particularly new solutions such as cost rental, that will meet the various needs of various people. More than anything else, we need to do this so our younger people have a chance to set up home in a viable way. An apartment home is absolutely just as important as a house, if not more important because we want, as the Deputy said, to bring back compact development close to the centre of cities and towns so people can live in a sustainable way that creates a good sense of community. Those apartments and flats are just as important as any other community.

How do we do this? In some instances, it will be through the €3.3 billion budget for direct spend by the public sector in social housing. This will give us a lever and control to be able to go flat out on this and build as many homes as we can as quickly as possible. We must also recognise, in truth, that one of the real constraints and problems is the availability of the construction sector to build houses and, at the same time, build the transport system and water, health and education infrastructure, carry out retrofitting and meet the other needs we have. We have huge demand and we will spend a lot of money on capital investment. Having workers with training and skills is one of the key issues.

We will also need agencies such as the Land Development Agency, and I understand the Land Development Agency Bill 2021 is on Committee Stage. This will mean the State will build not just social housing in the traditional model but new housing that is affordable for purchase and affordable cost rental housing. That will be key to the role of the Land Development Agency. The role of other Departments will be to provide State lands to allow the Land Development Agency to provide the cost rental solutions that give security of tenure at affordable rents and will build up the apartment as a home concept.

There is also a role for the private sector. The ESRI's housing needs demand study does not have set targets but makes an indicative case, similar to what the Central Bank has set out, that we need 33,000 houses a year, with one third social housing, one third rental and one third for purchase. The Government may have slightly different figures. We need solutions in these areas also.

The financing in this regard was put in place to help the building sector provide some of those houses for purchase and or rent. Another part of the problem we have, as well as the shortage of building workers, is that we do not have a financing system that is fit for purpose. We are down to two main banks and the legacy of the housing crash is that our basic funding mechanisms for development and construction are not working. The market is not working. We need that type of intervention, among many other initiatives, to get the balanced range of solutions we need. If we present it as though there is one easy fit if only there was political will to do it, that would not be honest and neither would it be accurate in terms of what the problem is. The problem is multifaceted and needs a range of solutions, including the ability of various agencies to make sure that we have the development finance to ensure that a range of different properties are built.

It is revealing that the Minister did not at any stage say that it is wrong for taxpayers' money to be given to large developers who do not need it to build houses and apartments that will be sold to large institutional investors who will charge working families rip-off rents. That is either right or wrong. I would like to hear the Minister's response in respect of it.

The Poolbeg strategic development zone is in the Minister's constituency. This is another example of the failed Government housing policy. Thousands of homes are going to be developed in this area for the high-end high-priced build-to-rent sector. We now have a situation where, because of the Government's failure last week to include apartments in the planning and tax changes, the 550 affordable homes guaranteed in that strategic development zone are in jeopardy. Can the Minister tell us whether he believes it is wrong for taxpayer's money to go to big developers to build developments that will be sold to institutional investors to be rented at sky-high rents? What is he going to do, particularly with respect to including apartments in the measures on planning and tax announced last week, to ensure that the 550 affordable homes that are supposed to be delivered for voters in his constituency will actually be delivered and will not go to large institutional investors, thereby ensuring that people will have to continue to pay rip-off rents?

In the Poolbeg development, I have no sense that those affordable housing units will not become available. I am not happy with the mechanism used in the context of the development of that project to date. I would have much preferred it if we had got direct State build and access to the land but that is not the legacy that we inherited. We will manage matters, however, and make sure that we provide social and affordable housing units on that site and others.

This evening, our councillors will be working - Sinn Féin has been involved with a similar issue in Donabate - in the context of the sort of solutions that we are presenting within government to give power to local authorities in order that they will retain a certain percentage of homes and that homes cannot all be sold off to institutional funds. This is because we want a mix. To go back to my key argument, we need a mix of different solutions. This evening, our councillors will be taking that approach in order to deliver real solutions on the ground.

The provision of finance, be it by the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund or the other financing agencies, is not a cash injection from or a payment by the Exchequer. We are setting up financing mechanisms that allow us have a range of different solutions. We need financing. Our financing system is not working. We need a variety of different operators including, where there are gaps in the market, the State intervening to make sure that we have finance.