The disgraceful practice of so-called cuckoo funds snapping up family homes in bulk, under the noses of ordinary workers and families, is an issue we have raised with the Taoiseach in the House many times. Indeed, it is perhaps the most abhorrent aspect of our broken housing system. Of course, what is even worse is the practice of these funds snapping up those homes and then leasing them back to local authorities. That is a triple whammy. The funds get away scot-free, the taxpayer pays over the odds for social housing that we do not own, and families and young people are priced out of the market.

The Taoiseach told the Dáil that this practice would cease. In fact, on 5 May, he said that no local authority should be engaged in leasing back homes from these funds. He went on to say that this message should "go out loud and clear from Government". That was a fairly lofty pronouncement. It is now clear that the message from Government is loud and clear and it is, in fact, a direct contradiction of what the Taoiseach said on 5 May. Tomorrow night, it is the intention of the Minister for Finance to introduce an amendment that will afford these funds another tax break to incentivise them to buy up family homes and lease them back to councils. On the one hand, the Taoiseach told the Dáil that councils should not engage in long-term leases with institutional investors, but the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Deputy Darragh O’Brien, is now actively encouraging it. This is happening on the Taoiseach's watch. One really could not make this stuff up.

The result of all of this, to be clear, is that aspiring home buyers will continue to be priced out of the market by institutional investors who avail of sweetheart tax breaks gifted to them by Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and, lest we forget, by the Labour Party in its time. If the Taoiseach really means what he said in May, he will insist that the Minister's amendment to the Finance (Covid-19 and Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2021 is scrapped. He will not do that, however, because he is not serious about this and he never has been. He is content to allow these funds to rip off our citizens. He has done nothing to rein this shower in and their sweetheart tax arrangements remain in situ. Indeed, far from sorting this mess out, the Taoiseach is, in fact, adding to it at a time when families and young people cannot put a secure roof over their heads.

It is a free-for-all when it comes to apartments. In 2019 alone, 95% of apartments built were acquired by these institutions at the expense of first-time buyers. Last year, six out of every seven homes built in the city of Dublin were apartments and these funds have carte blanche to snap up all of them in bulk. The Government has surrendered our city to these vulture funds, to the detriment of ordinary workers and families. Now it is pulling another stroke and attempting another fast one by actively encouraging these funds to acquire houses and rip off the Irish taxpayer by exempting the funds from any tax hike. Is it not time now to rip up this plan and start all over again? Is it not time for the Taoiseach to be true to his word? Is it not time to have effective remedies and stop these funds from snapping up apartments and houses under the noses of families and working citizens?

First, I again reject the Deputy's assertions in regard to Government housing policy and our commitment to building social houses and, indeed, affordable houses, and providing the first cost-rental scheme in the evolution of State housing policy. The Minister has brought in a suite of measures and initiatives that the Deputy consistently ignores. We have allocated more money to the building of houses this year than ever before in the country's history. There is a difference between my approach and that of the Deputy. She sees the housing crisis as a political opportunity; I see it as a major social problem that needs to be fixed. All her language today is about votes and elections. That is all it is about. It is about how she exploits the problem, not about finding solutions. She sees a lot of young people, as do all Members, who cannot get access to housing and she thinks how she can use their situation to generate anger and division and get political advantage. That seems to be her approach and that of her party.

I look at the issue differently. I want to see how I, along with my Government colleagues, can resolve it. Resolving it means a range of measures, principally direct building of housing, both social housing and affordable housing. To be fair, the Minister has brought in a suite of measures, including affordable housing schemes, which the Deputy has railed against. By the way, she has been quiet enough in terms of actually opposing them in here on the floor of the House. She is saying one thing and articulating against the Minister a lot in respect of his affordable schemes. She opposed the help-to-buy scheme, she is opposed to shared equity and she is opposed to the Land Development Agency, which will be launched shortly and is very important in terms of getting houses built. The Government today approved a plan for Shanganagh, which will be a significant housing development in itself, both social and affordable. We are about action and getting things done. I am interested in getting results in terms of getting houses built. It is the most important task facing the Government and we have allocated substantial funding to it. That is how we are going to approach it.

The very clear focus of the housing for all strategy, which the Minister will be publishing and is being deliberated on at Cabinet level right now, is direct build for social housing and schemes for affordable housing so that young people, and people in general, can afford to buy houses, and the utilisation of State lands to facilitate the building of affordable homes and social homes. That is what is contained in the Land Development Agency legislation and other measures and in the reform of the serviced sites fund that the Minister has introduced. By any yardstick, his activity in the House in the past month illustrates the range of initiatives he is taking in terms of affordability and freeing up housing and direct build capacity. The cost-rental scheme, as I mentioned earlier, will be a further addition to that.

The Deputy referred to comments I made in the House. I do not believe there should be any large-scale leasing by local authorities in respect of social housing. There can be limited use, which I said as well in the Dáil that day. The Deputy should go back to the next sentence, which she excluded, where I referred to mortgage to rent provision, for example, to help people who are in distress. It is important to get people out of mortgage arrears distress, which we have been doing for quite some time, and the repair and leasing scheme is important as well. The mortgage to rent scheme is a hugely important scheme, as the Deputy knows, that allows families and households in mortgage distress to remain in their homes. However, the central pillar of the housing for all strategy will be direct build. It is about getting houses built that people can own and local authorities will own, which will increase local authority housing stock over the next number of years. The social housing programme for the next five years will be the largest in the history of the State. We need to get local authorities building and we need local councils to get the projects delivered and so forth.

At a time of crisis, when so many people struggle to put a roof over their head, they deserve much more than the kind of incoherent waffle we are hearing from the Taoiseach as Head of Government. It is really quite disgraceful. I have the Minister's amendment here. It is written down, black on white, what the Government is proposing to do. It is proposing to incentivise these funds to buy up houses, lock, stock and barrel, pricing ordinary buyers out of the market because they cannot compete with these big funds. The funds will be incentivised to buy up all of these homes and then lease them back to local councils. That is what it says in the amendment.

By addition, the Government has also allowed these funds to have a free hand in respect of apartment blocks.

I have set out for the Taoiseach the reality that a significant proportion of new builds in this city and beyond are apartment blocks. Far from assisting those who are in the middle of this housing crisis, he is making things worse.

Time is up, Deputy, please.

I am asking the Taoiseach simply to be true to what he said in May, that is, that there should not be an allowance for these funds to snap up homes and lease them back to councils.

Time is up, Deputy, please.

I want him to be as good as his word and to call a halt to this.

When is the Deputy going to be honest with people? It is her behaviour that is disgraceful. It is her and her party who opposed 975 homes in Clondalkin which included 30% social housing. It is Sinn Féin that opposed 500 homes in Tallaght, of which 80% would be social or affordable houses. Sinn Féin opposed 278 houses in Swords. Most recently, it voted against 1,200 social, affordable and private homes at Ballymastone in Donabate, a development that would have delivered 238 social homes and 238 affordable homes priced at between €250,000 and €270,000. Sinn Féin opposed those houses. It opposed the Land Development Agency Bill which gives us the capacity to deliver houses, both social housing stock and affordable housing stock. The hypocrisy from the Deputy's party is incredible. Sinn Féin is about exploiting housing for votes but it comes up with no solutions. It opposes everything that is put before the House in respect of-----

I thank the Taoiseach. The time is up.

Does the Taoiseach propose to answer questions?

The contrast between the Deputy's rhetoric and her delivery in respect of housing on the ground is quite disgraceful.

Does the Taoiseach propose to answer questions during Leaders' Questions? Are there answers to our questions?

I ask the Taoiseach to respect this House and to respect party leaders who are putting questions to him. I am asking him to give me a straight answer, unlike his last response, to a straight question that I will pose. He has stated that housing is the number one crisis facing people, young people in particular. He said that anything the Government can do in terms of housing, it is going to do. One of the things the Taoiseach promised to do was to deal with cuckoo funds buying up family homes. His Government eventually introduced a 10% stamp duty on the bulk purchase of ten or more homes. The Minister for Finance, Deputy Donohoe, described it as a strong deterrent and stated that funds that try to get around the measures will be caught and prevented from doing so. However, now we learn that what the Government is doing is actually quite different. Instead of catching out cuckoo funds trying to evade this measure, it is actually helping them to do so. Cuckoo funds that lease homes back to local authorities will be exempt from the stamp duty increase. This Government is renowned for saying one thing and doing something else but this U-turn can only be described as brazen and downright dishonest.

In May, just two months ago, the Taoiseach told my colleague, Deputy Catherine Murphy, that he did not agree with local authorities entering long-term leasing deals. He stated, "No local authority should be on the other side of this, engaging in a long lease with these institutional investors." Later that month, he was clear that long-term leasing is "bad value", as he called it, and stated, "That is my view and I continue to make that clear." He has not done a very good job of making it clear, given that his housing Minister has quietly tabled an amendment to the Finance (Covid-19 and Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2021 that will actually incentivise cuckoo funds to swoop in, purchase homes from under the noses of first-time buyers and then lease them back to the State. The measures the Government introduced to limit the activity of cuckoo funds in the residential property market were the bare minimum that was required. It did not even bother to include apartments. Now we learn that even the bare minimum has been diluted and that the promises the Taoiseach made to the people to do something about the activity of these funds are worthless. Fundamentally, the Government cannot be trusted. Instead of helping young people trying to buy a home, it prefers to help the vultures seeking to profiteer on their misery.

I am asking the Taoiseach to show some respect and answer my specific questions. Does he think long-term leasing is unacceptable and bad value? Is that still his view? If not, when did he change his mind? Why should anyone trust the Government to solve the housing crisis when it cannot even be trusted not to amend its own reforms?

First, I always respect Opposition leaders in terms of the questions they put-----

-----but I always reserve the right to respond robustly.

Then answer the question.

When the Deputy sees the housing for all strategy, she will see the point I am making. The strategy will-----

-----cover the housing policy of the Government for the next five years. That will make it very clear that the focus will be on building houses, owning houses-----

Just answer the question.

I will deal with it. I am entitled to reply and not to have this constant heckling which seems to have become a feature. If Deputy Shortall wants me to respect leaders, reciprocity is called for. I am simply making the point that when the housing for all strategy is published, it will reflect my views on the optimal way forward for local authorities. I believe the best value for money is for local authorities to buy houses and to own houses. That is my view, and it is a view that will be reflected in the housing for all strategy.

In my commentary in the Dáil, I also said it has limited use. Leasing had been built up before I came into office. It does have some limited use in certain circumstances in terms of housing people who need emergency social housing. We have had a 48% reduction in family homelessness, for example, partly facilitated through leasing and actions taken by Dublin City Council, on which the Deputy’s party has members. That is exactly what I said last month in the Dáil in respect of this. Leasing, however, does not represent, in any shape or form, the core policy platform of this Government in respect of social housing. Can I make that very clear? Direct builds, both by local authorities and approved housing bodies, will do so. In addition, affordable housing is to be facilitated by local authorities and the Land Development Agency. With regard to the latter, legislation is going through the House that I hope will be passed before the summer recess. It will enable us to put the agency on a statutory basis to get houses built. Again, the Deputy is distorting the Government’s response by focusing on a single amendment tomorrow evening as if it constitutes the entirety of Government policy. Of course, it does not.

The Taoiseach knows I am not saying that.

The Deputy is saying that. She is implying that.

No, I am not.

That is exactly what she has been doing.

Just answer the question, please.

That is what she has been doing. She has been trying to undermine Government policy because the bottom line is that she does not know where her own policy is at the end of the day. We are clear that we have a suite of measures. The largest social housing programme in the history of the State will be part of that housing for all strategy which will involve direct build and building up the social housing stock of local authorities and approved housing bodies; building affordable homes, which is a critical need right now; developing cost rental, which is extremely important; and getting homelessness down.

Thanks to the excellent work of the Business Post on this issue, we know that one industry source has said that social housing lease deals are like government bonds on steroids. That is what the Taoiseach is facilitating. He has not answered the specific question I asked. He is obfuscating. If his word means anything, he will withdraw the amendment due to be moved tomorrow evening and ensure that first-time buyers have at least a fighting chance of buying a home for themselves. The Taoiseach should do the right thing, withdraw the amendment, stick to his word and let us trust him on that.

Is the Deputy asking about first-time buyers? They will not be buying social housing.

No, the competition-----

First-time buyers will be assisted by a comprehensive range of measures in the housing for all strategy, but also in terms of the help-to-buy scheme and-----

The cuckoo funds are competing with them.

-----the shared equity scheme-----

Does the Taoiseach get that?

I get what the Deputy is talking about but the point I am making is that-----

The cuckoo funds are competing with them by being incentivised to enter these-----

-----we will be doing more to incentivise first-time buyers. The Deputy, or certainly the party opposite me, opposed the 22,000 people who gained from the help-to-buy scheme-----

Sorry, that is not my party.

That is helping first-time buyers-----

Just answer the question.

-----and we will be building far more-----

Answer the question. Are you going back on your word?

----affordable housing through the Land Development Agency legislation-----

Two months ago, you said something.

-----which is going through the House this week.

Now you are doing the opposite.

A Cheann Comhairle, is it regular that heckling is facilitated?

You are having a cross-debate between the two of you.

No, a Cheann Comhairle, on a point of order, it is going on a lot.

If the remarks came through the Chair, it would be easier for me to manage it.

A Cheann Comhairle, it has been remarked to me for quite some time that this is a growing trend and it is being facilitated, which was not agreed on Leaders Questions and is certainly not my understanding of Leaders Questions.. My understanding was----

Taoiseach, what I would say to Members is that if everybody addressed their remarks through the Chair-----

That is a cop-out-----

-----then we would have less of this going on and I would be in a better position to deal with it.

I do not accept that, a Cheann Comhairle.

If people want to talk directly to each other one-to-one, it is rather difficult to deal with.

I do not accept that, a Cheann Comhairle.

Are we finished with that question? Yes. I call on Deputy Boyd Barrett.