No prizes for guessing what I am going to go at. I will also be focusing on the housing announcement. The Taoiseach is quoted in the media as saying that the Government is seeking to balance the rights of tenants and landlords. It is no surprise which side the balance has fallen on in light of the Government's neoliberal habits. Will the Taoiseach help my constituents in Donegal balance the figures for the county? This morning, there are only 49 houses available to rent in Donegal, 27 of which are in Letterkenny. However, there are over 1,500 short-term lets available on Airbnb. Houses to rent are: Ballyshannon, two; Ballybofey, one; Dungloe, one; Kilcar, one; Falcarragh, one; Buncrana, zero; Carndonagh, zero; Convoy, zero; Carrick, zero; Donegal town, zero; and Killybegs, zero. Does the Taoiseach want me to continue with the rest of them? Of the 49 houses available, none is affordable for those on HAP. A single person on jobseeker’s would have to pay more than 62% of their income to rent the cheapest house shown on daft.ie this morning. A family with three children would have to find €230 per week to keep the roof over their heads - after HAP - at the current rate being charged for the average three-bedroom house in Donegal.

I have told the Taoiseach before that HAP is failing. There are 2,606 households in Donegal locked into these failing tenancies. There are almost 2,700 people on the council housing list, most of whom have been waiting years for offers. According to figures from the North West Simon Community, the average number in emergency accommodation in the region trebled between 2016 and 2022. It was 108 for one week in January alone. There are fewer than 40 emergency beds in the region. This does not account for the hidden homelessness figures we know exist, nor does it include the impending explosion in rental need to be generated by the defective blocks saga, for which the Government has no plan.

It is clear there is no capacity. There will be a catastrophic failure in the housing sector in Donegal to compound that which already exists. Week after week, we hear announcements from the Taoiseach and the Minister. However, these are having zero impact on the ground in my constituency. These figures are repeated across the country. More than 3,500 children are homeless. That is a shameful indictment of the Government's tenure. It is about time the Government owned it and admitted that is has failed utterly. Will the Taoiseach be honest and admit that? Maybe he will say he is going to stand over the Government's decision? That is new. In a month or six weeks’ time, when it is clear it has not worked, will he own it then and state that he was wrong? The Government needs to build public housing. That is the only way we can do this. We need to keep the eviction ban in place in order that nobody can go into homelessness. There are no houses for these people. That is the reality. The Taoiseach has to admit and live up to that.

I am not sure I was quoted accurately on that. I do not believe this is about weighing up the balance between landlords and renters as if it is one versus the other. People need places to rent. If we do not have more places to rent, there will be longer queues of people trying to get rental properties and renters will pay higher rents. We need more landlords in the market in order to increase availability and reduce rents. We have lost about 40,000 landlords from the market in the past couple of years. We need to turn that around and stem the tide of landlords leaving. More importantly, we need to encourage more landlords to come back in. It is our assessment that if we had extended the moratorium, it would have made matters worse in the medium term, not better.

I have heard what Opposition parties have said. I heard the Labour Party say today that it would extend it for a few months. I heard Sinn Féin say it would extend it until the end of the year. Do we really believe it is credible things would change so much by September, October or the end of the year that we would be able to lift this ban? I do not think anyone honestly believes that.

We do.

A decision has to be made. We believe this is the right decision, in the round, in the public interest for the reasons I have outlined.

I will finish on one matter Deputy Pringle talked about. I know he is interested in ideology. I am not particularly interested in ideology; I am interested in outcomes for people. The Deputy stated that the Government has a neoliberal ideology. Would a Government with such an ideology have built more social housing last year than in any year in my lifetime since 1975?

Would a neoliberal Government have brought in rent pressure zones and limited rent increases to 2%, which is lower than the rate of inflation and the rate at which incomes are rising?

It certainly would have, once-----

Would a neoliberal Government have introduced the help-to-buy scheme, which has helped 30,000 people buy their first homes? Those people know who they are and know they would not have a home today under a left Government.

The Taoiseach has just given a classic example of right-wing ideology. The reason the Government built more houses than in any year since 1975 may be because it was forced - kicking and screaming - to do so. That is the difference of the situation.

Nonsense.

The difference is-----

At least the Deputy is acknowledging it.

I thank the Deputy for acknowledging the fact.

The difference is that we would have kept people who are now homeless in houses, on a temporary basis, while new houses were being delivered. The Government is not doing that. The Government's help-to-buy scheme and other schemes do not meet people's needs. What we need is a public housebuilding programme. The eviction ban should be kept in place while that is getting up and running. The need for an eviction ban would then decline because houses would be built and the need would be met. Unfortunately, the Government will not do what I am suggesting. That is the sad reality of the situation. If the Government is proved to be wrong in a couple of months' time, will it reverse its decision? I do not think so.

It might be useful to inform the House of how much has been done by the Government while the moratorium has been in place. In the past three to five months, 5,000 new social housing units were built. A further 600 were released, 500 were bought and 1,500 voids were returned to use. An additional 500 emergency beds and 150 cold-weather beds were provided. Nobody can say, at least not factually and honestly, that the Government did not act while the moratorium was in place to provide additional social, permanent and emergency housing, as needed. We decided earlier today not just to allow the moratorium to lapse, as always planned, but to authorise local authorities to buy 1,500 homes in circumstances where landlords are selling and the tenants involved are social housing tenants. To put that into context, we have approximately 1,600 homeless families in the State. The fact that we are willing to buy 1,500 homes from landlords who are selling up in order to prevent people becoming homeless is a significant decision and has to be seen as part of the announcement today.