The ESRI report published today shows the utterly disastrous situation facing low-income households looking for and needing support to get affordable housing. It demonstrates that the Government's failure to provide the social housing necessary for low-income families and to have housing assistance payment, HAP, limits that are even close to the extortionate rents being charged out there, as well as its refusal to raise the income thresholds for more than a decade, mean that low-income families are either not getting the housing support necessary to find rental accommodation or, worse, not getting any housing support at all because their incomes are marginally over the income thresholds. The human reality of this is that today yet another person facing eviction through no fault of their own walked into my clinic. Nothing is available in the area. This person is facing homelessness and is not entitled to housing support. What is the Government going to do to respond to the findings of this report?

I have not had a chance to read the report yet but I will certainly get to it, if not over the next few days then over the weekend. As the Deputy will know, at the centre of the Government's response to the housing crisis is an increase in supply. Supply on its own will not solve the problem, but we will not solve the problem without additional supply. It is a fact that 25,000 new homes have been built in the past year, more than has been the case for probably a decade. There are 35,000 under construction and 45,000 going through planning. We need to ramp up supply. That on its own will not solve the problem-----

It will not.

-----but it is the biggest part of solving the problem.