At the weekend, Mr. Killian Woods in the Business Post revealed that the National Asset Management Agency, NAMA, was in possession of 54 units - let us call them what they are, namely, potential homes - in Prospect Hill, Finglas, 28 of which were vacant and 26 of which had been empty for a decade. That is an incredible fact for a publicly owned agency. This report confirmed and provided further detail on information that I had received in reply to a parliamentary question recently. When it is all added together, the situation is even more shocking and disgraceful. NAMA is still in possession of 577 acres of residential land that is suitable for delivering housing. In the answer to my question, it was confirmed that NAMA was in possession of 50 units that were sitting vacant and that it also had 1,400 units under construction, 4,600 units with planning permission, 7,500 where planning applications had been submitted or were in preparation, and 8,500 units at pre-planning stage. NAMA has the land as well as assets that are well under way to deliver 24,000 homes, but what is it doing with them? It is selling them at prices in excess of €500,000.

The agency is selling them to vulture funds and cuckoo funds, that is, property speculators and the very people who are driving rents to unaffordable levels and house prices to completely unaffordable levels for the vast majority of working people. When questioned about this recently, Brendan McDonagh confirmed that NAMA does not sell properties unless it can yield a profit from them. Is the Government not speaking out of both sides of its mouth when it says it is doing absolutely everything it can to address the housing crisis and to deliver public and affordable housing while at the same time an agency, fully in the control of the State, which has paid off all of its debts and has €1.2 billion in cash reserves having sold €42 billion worth of property and assets, mostly to the same vulture funds and cuckoo funds, is not being used to deliver every house or residential unit that it is capable of delivering for public and affordable housing only? How can the Government possibly allow a situation where a public agency is contributing to the housing crisis, is facilitating the property developers and, in some cases, as also confirmed in the response to the parliamentary question, is selling houses to these property investors who then lease them back to the local authorities, for which the Government is paying astronomical amounts of public money to these entities? Is that not outrageous? Will the Government issue an instruction to NAMA, as it can do under the Finance Acts, to deliver everything it has as public and affordable housing and to stop its actions which are contributing to the housing crisis?

That instruction cannot be issued in the manner articulated by the Deputy and he knows that well. The legislation underpinning NAMA is very specific. That Act sets specific objectives and functions for NAMA, which are well established. NAMA has facilitated the construction of housing. There is an issue in terms of how, going forward, we interact with NAMA in regard to the provision of social housing. NAMA has in the past offered social housing to the State through the local authorities and so forth, some of which was taken up by local authorities and some of which was not taken up because of the local authorities' views in terms of the suitability of the particular housing that might have been offered by NAMA at that time.

The Housing for All strategy commits approximately €4 billion per annum by the State. The State is phasing out the leasing of units. The overwhelming majority of the State investment under Housing for All is going into the construction of housing, particularly social housing, at approximately 9,000 units per annum. There will be some element of purchase and, for the first two years, the phasing out of the leasing of local authority housing to deal with homelessness and people who are in need. Let us not sloganise a completely wrong narrative in terms of the State's centrality in building social housing and in facilitating the building of affordable homes and providing the infrastructure to enable house construction to happen, be that water infrastructure or the urban regeneration and development funds, URDFs, which have been announced all over the country to facilitate brownfield sites and the development of compact housing and apartment construction. That is the agenda. It is a State-centred approach.

In respect of NAMA, it has very specific legislative underpinning. There is an issue in regard to how, as time evolves, we interact with NAMA in terms of using its capacity to add to the State's endeavours under Housing for All in terms of the provision of housing. That will be under ongoing review.

The Taoiseach is misleading people. He is correct that the mandate set by the Government for NAMA is to blame for this outrageous situation. Let us remember what is at stake here: thousands of families are homeless, almost 100,000 families are on housing waiting lists and 70% of working people are completely priced out of the housing market.

The truth is the NAMA legislation first of all requires the agency to avoid undue concentrations or distortions in the market for development land and to have regard to proper planning and sustainable development land and it gives the Minister the power to confer on NAMA, by order, additional functions. It also has a requirement to contribute to the social and economic development of the State. The power is there. It is in the hands of the Government to tell NAMA what to do with its remaining housing and land assets. The Government refuses to tell NAMA to deliver all it can, namely, 24,000 homes, which would contribute enormously to alleviating the housing crisis. It refuses also to tell the agency that it must deliver all that as exclusively public and genuinely affordable housing, instead of what it is currently doing, which is selling it to profit-hungry investors who are driving the price of property and rent through the roof and contributing to the housing crisis.

NAMA represents the taxpayer. It had a responsibility, with regard to the loans it took over, to yield a return for the taxpayer, whom this Oireachtas represents. As I said earlier, NAMA has offered housing stock to local authorities already. As I said, in the coming period, the utilisation of NAMA's activities in respect of further housing provision is something that is under ongoing review by Government, and it will remain under review. However, we need more houses and we need more houses of different types.

We do not need houses at €500,000.

We are providing social housing.

Not at €500,000.

Remarks should be made through the Chair.

We are not doing it at €500,000. The State is going to build-----

NAMA is. It is also sitting on empty properties.

The State is going to build social housing. We will provide 11,000 social homes in 2022. That is what we are going to do. We are going to do an average build of about 9,000 every year. In addition the State is going to build and help to facilitate the building of a whole range of affordable houses, and cost rental ones also.