I listened to part of the Tánaiste's interview on Newstalk yesterday. I know he agrees with the President that the housing situation is now a disaster. However, he seems to have trouble figuring out who is responsible for that disaster. I will join some of the dots.

The Tánaiste and Fine Gael have now been in government for 11 years. For most of that time, there has been a housing crisis. His party has repeatedly told us that houses cannot be built overnight. Enda Kenny was one of the first to use that line in 2015. People have been listening to the Tánaiste's party acknowledging the crisis for eight years and now he is acknowledging that is not just a crisis, but a disaster. In 2016, Deputy Coveney told this House that not even rapid-build housing could be built overnight. Of course, it was never built so the Government tried something else. It brought in legislation for strategic housing developments that bypassed local planning procedures. That was supposed to speed up the delivery of housing but, in fact, slowed it down and eroded local democracy, creating great problems in the planning system. There is a real scandal in An Bord Pleanála in that regard that has yet to properly unfold. The Government brought in build-to-rent legislation that allows developers to build lower quality rental accommodation. Build-to-rent accommodation is now practically the only residential accommodation being built in Dublin city because it is the most profitable. In 2020, nearly 82% of residential schemes for which permission was applied for or granted in Dublin were build-to-rent developments, all of which come with sky-high rents. Where are people supposed to buy? People are being pushed out. One would start to wonder about the 15-minute sustainable communities. Some of Government's other innovations have been equally bad. It spent a long time trying to bring in co-living developments, that is, apartments smaller than car parking spaces for disabled people. It finally abandoned that idea and now mostly focuses on handing developers cash rewards of up to €144,000 for every apartment they build and continuing lucrative tax breaks for vulture funds.

Does the Tánaiste know how enraging it is for people who have been listening for years to promises that this crisis will be sorted out to hear the Government absolve itself from causing that crisis as if it is a disinterested party? What is he going to do to resolve this disaster, which he has acknowledged?

What I acknowledged yesterday is that the very real housing crisis we face in this country is a disaster for many people. It may not be for the 60% or 70% of us who are lucky enough to own our own homes, whether through a mortgage or outright, but it is certainly a disaster for people who cannot afford to buy a home and really want to and for people who are paying very significant proportions of their income in rent. I do not deny that is devastating for them and that there is a housing crisis, nor have I. I did not need to be told by anyone about the problems we face as a country. However, it is also the case, and it is just a fact, that the origins of this housing crisis lie in events that happened a very long time ago, when we had a property bubble that was followed by a banking collapse and a construction collapse. As a result of that, instead of building 30,000 or 35,000 new homes every year for a decade, which would have been the norm, virtually no houses were built for a very long time. We have a deficit of houses in the State. There are probably 250,000 fewer houses than we need. That is the origin of this housing crisis. The responsibility of those parties who are willing to be in government, and the Deputy's party has chosen not to enter government on several occasions, which is something we can come back to, is not to describe problems but to try to come up solutions and put them into action. That is hard. It is difficult work but it is work we are willing to do, unlike the Deputy's party.

The Deputy asked what we are doing about it. The main thing we are doing is increasing supply. On its own, increasing supply will not solve the housing crisis but we will not solve it without increasing supply. Where are we at the moment? Approximately 25,000 new homes will be built this year, more than in any year for a very long time. Approximately 35,000 homes are now under construction, more than have been for a very long time. Approximately 45,000 have got planning permission in the past year so you can see a real pipeline of new housing coming on stream. The Deputy probably saw the figures that came out yesterday. In April of this year alone, more than 1,000 first-time buyers bought their first home. As far as I can remember, it has been a long time since 1,000 first-time buyers bought a new home in just one month. That is not enough. I want to see it increase to 2,000 and 3,000 a month. That is where we intend to be. Among the reasons that is happening is our help-to-buy scheme. More than 30,000 individuals and couples have received help in buying their first home through that scheme in recent years. That is something the Deputy's party wants to take away from them.

I will address one issue with regard to the number of people who own their own homes. Many of them have family, children and grandchildren, living with them. People are squeezed into box rooms with no hope. With regard to this idea of segregating and saying that people who own their own homes are grand, many people are worried about their children. This is not a one generation issue but a multi-generation issue that people are concerned about.

Affordable housing is a key issue. Some 82% of planning permissions granted in Dublin relate to build-to-rent properties that will be provided at very high rents. The kind of city being built is unsustainable. The Tánaiste is hell-bent on keeping things on that particular track, which makes 15-minute sustainable cities unachievable because people are being pushed out further. Looking at the evidence, it shows it is not working, it is a disaster and the Tánaiste should acknowledge that.

There is one point on which I agree with the Deputy, which is that the housing crisis affects a great number of people in society in different ways, whether it is people experiencing homelessness, people paying unaffordable rents, people who want to buy their first home but cannot or people who own their own home but who still have adult children living with them, which they find very distressing on behalf of their children. I get that and so does the Government.

The Deputy touched on the need for affordable housing. She should look at what the Government is doing. Cost rental is a reality for the first time. The Deputy was critical of my party and that is fair enough, but that was a policy initiated by Deputy Coveney and Eoghan Murphy. It took a few years for it to happen because it takes a few years to build houses and apartments. People are now being offered cost rental accommodation for the first time. We need a lot more of it. The current Minister, Deputy O'Brien, is really leading the charge on shared equity schemes so that more people can buy their first home. There are also local authority loans for people who cannot get a mortgage from a bank. Thousands are now getting mortgages backed by the Government through local authorities to allow them to afford a home.

The Deputy has not been particularly supportive of those policies. I think that is a shame.

We do not support policies that drive prices up.