Last Wednesday night, the Government voted again to ensure cuckoo funds continue to pay no tax and outbid workers and families for homes they desperately need. Those funds were back in the news at the weekend. The first story was about a Dutch outfit paying €110 million to hoover up 280 family homes in Dublin. The CEO of that outfit said it could own the houses for 50 years and is not selling them. In 50 years, the grandchildren of those struggling to buy a house today will be looking for a home of their own. Another story concerns a couple who cannot buy a house and are living in the house of a family member, which is a common story, even though they had saved a substantial deposit. They are infuriated that the Government continues to support cuckoo funds at the expense of ordinary home buyers.

Here is another story. Bartra, the private developer awarded the contract for O'Devaney Gardens, is threatening to sell 500 family homes to a cuckoo fund unless the Government dances to its tune. Bartra was given the valuable public land at O'Devaney Gardens effectively for free.

Not content with that sweetheart deal, and a huge subsidy from the public purse, it now wants more. It demands that the Government buy these homes at inflated prices of more than €400,000, or it says it will sell to a fund, which in turn will fleece people with rip-off rents. The developer is effectively trying to blackmail the taxpayer and is using the powerful presence of cuckoo funds as leverage. This is not its first act of bad faith; far from it. There have been huge delays in building these homes. It has challenged planning decisions and mounted a judicial review. It is now brazenly attempting to hold the Taoiseach's Government to ransom.

This would not be happening if the Government had provided Dublin City Council with the financial support needed to develop these homes back in 2018. That proposal would have seen the delivery of 800 homes that ordinary people could actually afford to rent or buy. That is what we in Sinn Féin and others called for. Had the Government listened to us, O'Devaney Gardens would be at an advanced stage of construction, ready for families to move in next year. Instead, this deal, which the Taoiseach has championed to the hilt, means that these homes have not been built. When the first homes eventually come on stream, Bartra will slap a price tag of €400,000 on them, which will be way beyond the reach of ordinary workers and families.

Cinnteoidh talamh poiblí a dtugtar saor in aisce do na forbróirí chun tithe a thógáil atá róchostasach i gcomhair daoine go leanfaidh géarchéim thithíochta ar aghaidh. Is de bharr pholasaí an Rialtais go bhfuil forbróirí ag bagairt tithe teaghlaigh a dhíol le ciste cuaiche a mbrúnn cíosanna ríchostasacha.

The fiasco at O'Devaney Gardens is a mess of the Government's own making. The Government was warned at the time and again that this was a terrible deal for tenants, homeowners and taxpayers. The Government was warned that sidelining the local authority and gifting public land to private developers was a really bad idea. Does the Taoiseach now accept those facts? What is his response to Bartra and its attempts to blackmail the taxpayer? What does he say now to Bartra? Will he now rein in these cuckoo funds by ending the sweetheart tax deals that his Government has afforded to them?

I thank the Deputy for raising the issue of housing, because I have repeatedly said that, in my view, housing is the single most urgent and important social issue facing our country at this point in time. Access to housing is fundamental to our security, stability, health and progress as a society. If we do not recognise the scale of the challenge and respond in kind, then this has the potential to be profoundly destabilising for society and to deprive many younger generations of the capacity to access housing and of being able to buy or rent at affordable rates.

The Housing for All strategy developed by this Government in the last year and a half is unprecedented in scale and investment, with more than €4 billion in State investment. It is the largest ever amount of social housing to be built year-by-year, with well up to 10,000 in 2022, between local authorities and approved social housing bodies. I refer as well to providing and supporting the provision of affordable housing, as well as cost rental and private development. As I said to the Deputy the week before last, regarding private rental, for example, of the 33,000 units that we are aiming to provide year-by-year, about 6,000 of those will be private rental. The Deputy acknowledged that there would be a need for private housing, in addition to social housing, State-supported affordable housing and cost-rental housing.

The Deputy is rewriting the narrative again today, because, unfortunately for her, the housing issue has all been about politics. The O'Devaney Gardens project would have been built a long time ago if it was not for people playing politics with it. It is either the Sinn Féin way or the highway. We either build houses its way or we will never build houses. It will always be against any sort of mixed tenure approach, or an approach that involves a mixture of social, affordable and private housing. Dublin City Council would have been very involved with O'Devaney Gardens. The project goes back to 2015, in more recent times-----

It goes way beyond that. The REIT developer friends-----

It goes back beyond that, and the Deputy's party keeps saying no. It always has an excuse and a reason to say this project cannot go ahead and so on.

Wow. Brass neck.

The crisis is so big that we need to get on with it in terms of allowing projects and rezonings to happen. The scale of the house building that must occur means the rezoning of brownfield sites. Let us be clear about that. It is not going to be possible to get 20,000 or 30,000 units per year if we do not do that. We need cities to grow in a compact way where services already exist. All we have, though, is objection after objection.

From your gang.

It will mean the disposal of property. Councils will have to dispose of lands-----

We do not control any council.

-----to enable housing to happen. Old industrial sites in cities will have to be rezoned for housing. If councils have land, they should dispose of it to ensure that housing happens-----

Dispose of it to whom?

To get housing built, and perhaps in partnership, as we are doing in some places across the country.

Please, Deputies.

The context here is very clear. We need to build houses at a far greater scale than we have been in recent years and we must do it quickly.

People and the cost of living-----

No one party can say, "It is our way or the highway, or that you do it in accordance with our ideological framework or not at all." That has been the nature of the Deputy's party's position for a considerable time. The Housing for All strategy is ambitious and has a strong delivery mechanism to get houses built. We need to get to 33,000 houses per year, with a mix of social, private, affordable and cost rental, and we are going to do it.

If ever there was a salutary tale and lesson of Fianna Fáil in government, the party of the Galway tent, brown envelopes and a cosy relationship with developers, it is O'Devaney Gardens. Look no further.

Hear, hear.

Hear, hear.

The reason this has dragged on and on is that its buddies that had a public-private partnership, PPP, arrangement with the State at the time went bust and let the entire community down. I could go on and on, but I do not have the scope to recount the corruption and the corrupted nature of its relationship with the people to whom I have referred. Its plan fails again because it is a myopic and limited view. I put it to the Taoiseach that the funds the Government now mollycoddles and the sweetheart deals it affords them are now coming back to bite it. Bartra has said that unless the State steps in and buys back homes at inflated prices, it is going to offload them to cuckoo funds. Those funds, in turn, will let out these homes and skin people for extortionate rents. I would like to know what the Taoiseach proposes to do about this as the Head of Government.

I thank Deputy McDonald. The time is up.

Does the Taoiseach believe the State ought to buy these 500 homes?

Please, the time is up.

Furthermore, does the Taoiseach believe that the sweetheart tax arrangements with these funds should continue? That is the Government's policy in the here and now, and it is this policy that is causing so much hardship for an entire generation of people that the Government has locked out of homeownership and who endure extortionate rents. This is happening on the Taoiseach's watch. Those, my friend, are the facts.

The Deputy used the word "corrupt".

Yes.

Sinn Féin is the last party to talk to anybody about corruption.

The Galway tent.

Deputy McDonald's party corrupted public life in this republic for well-----

Ansbacher, Galway.

-----on 40 years to a far greater degree than any other party in this country.

You are-----

It corrupted the moral code of our country and society by the murder and mayhem that it perpetrated, and that it still endorses.

It still supports the narrative of murder, mayhem and so forth.

Quiet, please.

The party also supports the undermining of women-----

Pathetic.

-----who were raped by IRA volunteers-----

No.

The Deputy's party covered it up.

Do not come into this House-----

What about Bessborough?

-----and lead with your chin, telling this party that we were corrupt. We had faults and flaws, about which there is no doubt, but we faced up to them. We never, ever attempt, as Sinn Féin consistently does, to try to rewrite the narrative and bury the truths.

You are pathetic.

The level of corruption Deputy McDonald's party engaged in-----

Pathetic.

The Taoiseach cannot even defend his own policy.

To come to the housing issue, what Sinn Féin is good at is rewriting narratives and spinning. In terms of Dublin City Council-----

Time is up.

-----we have allowed city councils to engage with partners to get housing developed, to get mixed tenure, to get private, affordable and social housing built.

What does he say about Bartra?

What is the Taoiseach's response to Bartra?

We are doing that.

He does not have one.

What is the Taoiseach's response?

Business as usual with Bartra. On you go.

In addition to that, we have provided €4 billion. The Deputy does not like the truth-----

He has no answer.

Will the Taoiseach answer a straight question?

We are going to provide €4 billion year by year.

Time is up.

Deputy McDonald needs to start answering some questions now.

I will when I am in your seat, with pleasure.

The Taoiseach needs to answer the question. Waffle.

How is she going to double housing output? She keeps using slogans that she articulates from time to time but there is no meat behind it.

The Taoiseach has no answer to the question.

There is no flesh on the bone. There is no reality behind what she is saying. The Deputy can wave all she likes but it does not hide the truth.