One of the depressing things about the instance of cronyism involving the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Deputy Coveney, is that it deflects attention at the beginning of the Dáil term from the issues that people expect us to be dealing with and the crises that they expect us to resolve. One of those issues will be highlighted at 5.30 p.m. this evening by the National Homeless and Housing Coalition. They will gather in a demonstration to appeal to this Government to break from the failed policies it has applied; to address the housing crisis; and to actually deliver the public and affordable housing, the affordable rents and the answers to the homelessness crisis that people are demanding. At that protest, there will be many groups who are affected by the ten years of failure by both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael in government to address the housing crisis; those affected by the mica issue; renters who are paying extortionate rents; working people who have no chance of getting on the housing ladder because of unaffordable prices; those waiting a decade and sometimes two decades on housing lists; people who are actually homeless; and many others.

One group I particularly want to highlight in these few weeks is those affected by the student accommodation crisis. It is absolutely dire. We are facing an unprecedented crisis of availability of affordable student accommodation. The student unions in Dublin, Galway, Limerick, Sligo and many other places are now overwhelmed with thousands of students who cannot find affordable accommodation. The disease of unaffordable rents that has contributed so much to the housing crisis in wider society is now infecting our student population and, indeed, our on-campus accommodation. It is completely pricing students out of the market of affordable student accommodation. The consequences are record levels of homelessness among students who are sleeping on couches or in friends’ homes and so on; being forced into hotels where they have to pay up to €400 per week for accommodation; or simply, being unable to find accommodation and having to commute two, three and sometimes four hours back and forward a day because they cannot get accommodation near their college.

Why is this happening? I put it to the Taoiseach that it is because of the failures of Government policy that now replicate themselves in the student accommodation issue. In UCD, which is a publicly funded college, they have increased student accommodation costs by 20% to 30%. In the newly constructed student accommodation, they are charging up to €15,000 per year for accommodation.

The Deputy's time is up.

Similarly, around this city, we have private investor-built student accommodation where they are charging €1,000 per month and more for student accommodation. This is, in other words, housing for profit and not for students. It is creating a massive student accommodation crisis. What is the Taoiseach going to do about it?

The Deputy raised the homelessness issue in the first part of his question. The Government's Housing for All strategy has fundamentally changed the State's approach to housing. Some €4 billion per annum will now be allocated to increasing housing supply - social housing, affordable housing, cost rental and private sector housing. We need housing supply to increase under all headings. A wide range of measures will be introduced. The legislative underpinning for those measures has been already passed through the Oireachtas in the majority of cases. Part of the Housing for All strategy is the total elimination of homelessness over the next decade. We have committed and signed up to that. Progress has been made in the past year. Fianna Fáil, by the way, has been in government for only the past 14 or 15 months and has not been in government for ten years, as the Deputy glibly throws out all the time. We need to increase investment in housing to get supply. Supply is the big issue for us.

The number of people in emergency accommodation has fallen by 7% in the past year. The current number of homeless individuals is 8,132, which represents a reduction of 23% from the 10,500 people recorded in October 2019 which was the highest number recorded to date. The current level of family homelessness is 48% below the peak figure recorded in July 2018.

For us, the housing first strategy is the key instrument in dealing with homelessness. We are working with the non-governmental organisations and the approved housing bodies in the homeless area to significantly increase supply. We are providing them with the resources particularly through the housing first approach, which I think most people accept is the preferable way to deal with homelessness in this country. We are very committed to that and the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, is certainly committed to dealing with it.

Regarding student accommodation, the Minister introduced legislation, the Residential Tenancies Act, to protect tenants, including students. We are also giving the capacity to the institutes of technology to borrow in order to provide additional student accommodation supply for students attending the technological universities and the institutes. For many years they did not have that capacity, which the universities had. We will be keeping a close eye to ensure the third level colleges do not charge exorbitant rates to students.

Obviously, the broader housing issue impacts on this because the more housing we develop, the greater capacity we develop in the market for students to be able to access accommodation at an affordable rate. At the moment we do not have the supply we need. We need to be building far more units across the board than we are currently building. Housing for All sets out a programme to do just that with very significant resources allocated.

We will debate the detail of Housing for All another day. I am a member of the Committee on Budgetary Oversight. According to the Parliamentary Budget Office, there will not be €4 billion of Government expenditure on Housing for All. There will be about €2.5 billion of direct Exchequer funding and the Government is essentially hoping to get the rest from the private sector. I will leave that for another day.

My point is that the reason we have a housing crisis in general, and specifically a student accommodation crisis, is that what is being built is for profit and it is unaffordable. This city is littered with new developments of highly expensive, unaffordable, private investor-built, student accommodation costing €1,000 or more a month.

It is also littered with new hotels which are now being rented to students who cannot find affordable accommodation. Does the Taoiseach know how many additional hotel rooms will be built, which are in the planning system, over the next while? It is 18,000 new hotel rooms. In this city between now and 2023, some 24 new hotels will be built - we have already had many new hotels built - with another 4,500 rooms. All that building capacity is going into building stuff for profit, but not going into building the affordable student accommodation we actually need. Now that disease is spreading onto the college campuses, with UCD building student accommodation for €14,000 a year, which is completely unaffordable, what is the Government going to do about it?

I do not accept the juxtaposition of the tourism industry expanding and developing accommodation, and students. The tourism industry will grow and develop. We want that to happen to create employment and so on.

Renting hotel rooms to students.

We do not want students renting hotel rooms. We want proper, purpose-built, affordable accommodation for students. That is what Housing for All aims to do and that is the agenda. The most effective way of dealing with all manifestations of the housing crisis, be it student accommodation, homelessness or the lack of affordability is to build far more houses and apartments than we are currently building. That is the key aim. There is a comprehensive range of measures to do that in Housing for All. The issues will be capacity constraints, making sure that we have a workforce in place to build at the scale of what we want to build.

They are all building hotels.

Those are the challenges and why we have set up a delivery model to make sure that all aspects of delivering Housing for All are attended to and dealt with.