We have had a housing crisis for more than a decade and this Government has been in office for three years yet only now a report comes to Cabinet stating what everybody already knew, which is that thousands of homes could be built on public land. For years, we have said that building public homes on public land is the answer to the housing crisis. Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil turned a deaf ear every time. They did not want to know.

The shocking thing about the report arriving at Cabinet today is that it does not present solutions for the current generation desperately seeking to put an affordable roof over their heads. It is about building houses in the future. You would imagine that we did not have a housing crisis now, today. There is no plan, no pace and no real attempt to get the job done. The truth is that, given the incompetence and inertia of this Government, it is our children and grandchildren who will be lucky enough to see these houses built, if they materialise at all.

This report lands on the Taoiseach's desk three days before he lifts a vital protection for renters, three days before he escalates a housing crisis that is already out of control and three days before he and his Government choose to increase homelessness. The clock is ticking for those whose eviction notices kick in from 1 April but the Government's decision intensifies the fear of receiving that dreaded call from the landlord for all renters. Yesterday, I met people in my own neighbourhood whose eviction notices come into force on Saturday. The fear of eviction goes to bed with them every night and they wake with that same dread every single morning. They will be out in a few weeks’ time and they have nowhere to go. The Taoiseach made this decision without putting any adequate plan in place and he still refuses to answer the fundamental question of where these people are to go.

We know that official homelessness figures represent only the tip of the iceberg. The full tragic story of homelessness is found in people moving back into the box rooms of their parents’ home, in people couch surfing in friends' houses and in young people emigrating to get a decent chance of a better life. Families are being broken up and scattered across the homes of the wider family, children are being separated from their mams and dads and brothers and sisters are being separated from each other. That is the story of Ireland’s hidden homeless. It is the traumatising experience to which the Taoiseach will consign thousands more by lifting the eviction ban.

It does not have to be this way, however. We have one last chance to stop thousands from losing their homes. The Sinn Féin Bill before the Dáil tonight will extend the eviction ban. It will buy time for the Taoiseach's Government to use emergency powers to ramp up the delivery of social and affordable homes and, crucially, to expand emergency accommodation. Tá seans amháin fágtha againn chun stop a chur leis na mílte daoine a bheith curtha amach as a dtithe. Impím ar gach Teachta Dála tacaíocht a thabhairt do Bhille Shinn Féin a shíneoidh amach an cosc ar dhíshealbhú agus ar an Rialtas an t-am sin a úsáid chun cur le táirgeacht tithe sóisialta agus tithe ar phraghas réasúnta.

I am asking every TD to back this Bill. Do not vote to evict your own constituents into homelessness.

It should not come to a vote and so I ask the Taoiseach to reverse his decision before it is too late. I ask the Taoiseach to keep this vital protection for renters in place until January of next year.

I would be interested if the Deputy knows how many new tenancies were created in Ireland last year.

They are not new.

Fifty thousand new tenancies were created last year.

They are not new.

They are annual registrations.

That means 50,000 people found a new place to live.

It is not true.

It is possible that in some cases those properties were rented out before but the fact is-----

To the same people.

Do not embarrass yourself.

Maybe even in most cases-----

Annual registration.

-----but 50,000 new tenancies created last year means that 50,000 people found a new place to live. It might have been a new property to rent. It might have been that they were renting it for the first time.

That is the answer to the Deputy's question as to where people will go - new tenancies. Fifty thousand individuals and families found a new place to rent last year. That will be the same this year. In some cases it will be social housing tenancies,

It will be the same 50,000.

Deputy Ó Broin, please.

-----in other cases it will be a private housing tenancy and in other cases it will be a housing assistance payment, HAP, tenancy. Emergency accommodation is not the solution but we will increase the amount of emergency accommodation for a group that may need it that cannot find a place to go.

Deputy McDonald is trying to exploit people's fears and anxieties and, if anything, fuel them. That is what the Deputy is trying to do - exploit fears and anxieties and fuel them. When the Deputy should be trying reassure and help people, that is not what she is doing.

The Deputy is creating the impression that 4,000 notices to quit automatically turns into 4,000 families in emergency accommodation.

Not true.

Deputy Ó Broin is shaking his head because he knows that is not true but people listening to you think that is what he is saying, by the way.

What the Taoiseach is saying is not true.

That is what people listening to Deputy Ó Broin think he is saying. We all know that 4,000 notices to quit does not turn into automatically 4,000 families in emergency accommodation-----

Three thousand nine hundred and ninety-five maybe.

-----and that will be evident over the next few months.

In opposing the Sinn Féin Bill, we are putting down a reasoned amendment setting out our plan, what we have done already in the past six months and what we will do in the months ahead. It is the same wording as the motion that the Dáil voted on last week and that is the reasoned amendment we are putting down to refuse a Second Reading for the Bill.

I have read Deputy Ó Broin's Bill. I have it here. I have read it, from cover to cover. It is a short Bill. We are opposing it for the following three reasons: it will make it illegal for people to move back into their own house or apartment unless they themselves are at risk of homelessness; it will make it illegal for somebody to move his or her son or daughter into an apartment when he or she goes to college in September-October even if he or she bought the apartment or house for that purpose; and it will also make it illegal for someone to sell a house that he or she owns even if he or she is in financial distress and has to do so for his or her own particular reasons.

That is inaccurate.

It might be a response to the crisis but it is not a solution to it.

Let me give the Deputy some practical examples of the kind of people who may be affected by Sinn Féin's Bill. A garda, for example, assigned to work in a different part of the country, maybe a young doctor in training, or maybe a teacher who went to Dubai for a few years and came home, would not be able to move back into their own home or apartment unless they themselves were at risk of homelessness. If they had the option of moving back into their parents' house, that is what Sinn Féin would have them do. That is what Sinn Féin's Bill would do.

Scaremongering.

Second, Sinn Féin's Bill would make it illegal for people to move back into an apartment or a house that their parents bought for them when they go to college. A lot of people - I met somebody in Waterford only a few months ago - bought an apartment in Cork with the express reason of buying it so that their son or daughter could move in there when he or she went to college. Sinn Féin would make that impossible. They would have to commute from Waterford or try and find alternative accommodation. Third, there are people who may need to sell the house that they have - it may even be their only house or apartment - for a good reason. They might be pregnant, for example, expecting a child, trying to raise a deposit to buy their own home. They might have bills. They might face an illness, for example, and they need to be able to pay those bills. Deputy Ó Broin's Bill prevents all of those people doing those things and that is why we think it is not a solution to the problem.

Our Bill buys the Government time to do what it needs to do. I said in my initial commentary the demonstrable unanswerable evidence of the Government's absolute failure to provide housing and failure to protect renters is everywhere to be seen and felt.

At no time did I say that 4,000 people would find themselves in emergency accommodation, much less 4,000 households, for the simple reason that there is not enough emergency accommodation to facilitate them.

I went to some length to spell out to the Taoiseach what homelessness looked like: people sofa surfing; being crammed into overcrowded accommodation; being back in their parents' house, if they are lucky; many back with their grandparents; families being separated; misery; despair; and anger. This is the story, but the Taoiseach is not hearing it. Despite all of his bluster, he has comprehensively failed to answer the one question that matters to people who will be looking this reality in the eye in a matter of days - where do they go?

The Taoiseach said tritely that tenancies were abundant, but that is not the case.

Hear, hear.

He never said that.

Saying that was an insult to people who the Government will cast into homeless, be they caught in the official figures or not.

He never said that.

He did, actually.

First of all, I know what homelessness looks like. Everyone in this House does. The Deputy should stop trying to pretend that she knows more than us or that she is somehow more compassionate than us.

The Government is the body causing it.

The Taoiseach does not have a clue.

I have answered the Deputy's question several times.

It would not be difficult to be more compassionate than the Taoiseach.

Deputy, please.

The fact that she has to misrepresent my answer-----

It is a low bar.

-----and interrupt me while I am speaking shows that she does not want an answer to her question. That is why she had to misrepresent the answer and that is why she has to interrupt me while I am trying to speak. She has an answer, but she will not hear it. She misrepresents it. She twists it. Quite frankly, a lot of people listening to her spokespeople, because of the way Sinn Féin has twisted this issue, believe that 4,000 notices of termination will result in 4,000 families going into emergency accommodation or becoming homeless.

No. It will be 4,000 homeless families.

I am glad she accepts that she has never claimed that and that that is not going to be the case. That is a good thing.

It is 4,000 homeless families.

One of the many reasons we will be voting against Sinn Féin's Bill tonight, in the form of a reasoned amendment, is precisely because Sinn Féin would be doing to a lot of people what it is against. It would be saying to them that they cannot move back into their own houses or move their own families into houses they own if they had the option of the box room or moving back in with their parents. Sinn Féin might help some people with this Bill, but it would hurt plenty of others. That is why we will not be supporting it.

The Government is a disgrace.

When the Land Development Agency, LDA, was being established in 2018, Fine Gael repeatedly said that it would be a game changer. We were told that 150,000 new homes would be built over 20 years and that sites had already been earmarked for 10,000. It was reported at the time that the first of these homes would be delivered in 2020. Many of these accolades concerning the LDA came from the Taoiseach. He said that the agency would be staffed by people with a proven track record in delivering homes and that it would hit the ground running. The praise did not stop there. He said that the LDA was one of the most significant ever State interventions in the housing market - as significant as the ESB, Aer Lingus or the IDA. Sadly, it was not to be.

Fast forward to today. Despite all of those lofty promises, the LDA has yet to deliver a single home on State land. We are told that we have to wait until next year, which will be six years after it was established, for that to happen.

There is more bad news in today's newspapers. Five years after the LDA's establishment, it has finally got around to conducting a review of property assets controlled by State companies. It found that fewer than 10,000 homes were capable of being delivered on these State lands within the next decade. This is pathetic. People reading these reports will be bewildered. If they are angry, too, I can understand that. They should be outraged at this utter incompetence.

How in the middle of a housing disaster when the Government claims it is pulling out all the stops has it taken the LDA five years to complete a review of the State's property assets? It is like some kind of sick joke. Some of the sites, like the CIÉ bus depot on Conyngham Road, were being spoken about as prospects for imminent development in 2018.

The abject failure of the LDA to live up to the Taoiseach's promises is just the latest betrayal in housing. We were promised 150,000 homes within 20 years. At the current rate of delivery, there is not a hope of that target being met. Was it an accurate assessment in 2018 to say that the LDA would be a game changer and hit the ground running?

Is the Taoiseach disappointed with the lack of delivery by the Land Development Agency? Does the Government need to revise its housing targets downwards given the bleak assessment from the LDA?

We are building public homes on public land. We built more public housing last year than in any year since 1975 - that is any year in the Deputy's lifetime or in mine - and I can guarantee we will build more this year. The LDA is building housing. Some 600 homes are under construction at the moment in Shanganagh. I will be travelling to Wicklow on Thursday morning to open a new housing development. The Deputy is welcome to come with me and I will show her the 600 houses under construction not too far from here in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown. Those homes will be occupied by people next year. The LDA is building housing. We can go to a site even closer than that, namely the Donore project at St. Teresa's Gardens where the LDA will be developing 500 homes. Some 265 homes are to be built at St. Kevin's Hospital, Cork. Planning approval was received only last week for 817 homes in Balbriggan and for a further 200 in Naas. I have not checked yet whether any of the Deputy's colleagues opposed those housing developments. I am not sure.

I read the LDA report. It is a useful report to read and it is an honest report. It shows that in addition to what is already being done - and it is in addition - approximately 66,000 more homes could be built on public land, but it is honest about the constraints. We should be honest with people about the constraints. Approximately 10,000 of those could be built in the next five to ten years. The remainder will take longer. That is the reality of house building in Ireland. For example, 600 people are already living in Cathal Brugha Barracks. It is an Army base. If we were to develop it for housing, which we may well do, those people and that base would have to be moved. Some of the sites are hospital sites. With the best will in the world, we all understand it takes time to build a new hospital and then to commission it. In some cases, there is no power connection, no water connection, the land is not zoned or there is no road connection. It is easy to say that the State should build 66,000 houses on public land and do so this or next year. This report studies that in detail. It considers 83 sites, site by site, showing what can be done and in what timeframe. Therefore, it is honest and realistic.

The LDA is our State land developer. It is our State house building company. The Deputy's party voted against the Land Development Agency Act 2021. I would like to know whether the Social Democrats is still against it and whether it would abolish the LDA if it got into Government. I believe that in time it will be as significant as the ESB or the Industrial Development Agency, IDA,-----

It has no teeth.

-----in transforming our country. It will be a game changer in that regard. It has got off to a slow start. Quite frankly, that is disappointing. We thought more would have been done by now, but it is now getting things done. We will be revising the target for the number of homes the LDA can build in the next 20 years upwards. The LDA had a slow start. It is now getting going. I will be happy to show the Deputy on Thursday so she can see it with her own eyes. We will be revising the targets upwards.

The Taoiseach saying that they are under construction now - five years later - reinforces the point I was trying to make. It is five years later. The LDA is not exactly hitting the ground running. That literally reinforces the point I made. The Taoiseach said that we all need to understand that it takes time. I understand that. The point I am making is that Fine Gael has been in government for 12 years. How much time does the Taoiseach want?

The Government's attacks have become as predictable as they are weak. Every week the Government fires back at the Opposition about objecting to house building. I did a quick Google search earlier and found reports of Fine Gael Deputies and councillors objecting to the building of 12,000 homes across Dublin between 2019 and 2022. These attacks on the Opposition sound increasingly desperate. The Government's continued attempt to blame us for its failure is not fooling anyone. Fine Gael has been in government for 12 years and almost every commitment it has made on housing has been broken. We have record homelessness, record house prices, record rents and now the Government is about to make a disaster even worse by ending a no-fault eviction ban - we are only calling it an eviction ban but it is a no-fault one - in the middle of a housing disaster, making thousands more people homeless. Fine Gael's legacy in housing is one of repeated and abject failure. We all know it is not the Opposition's fault. Does the Taoiseach think people should have confidence in this Government's ability to solve the housing disaster at this point?

I have never argued that the housing crisis is the fault of the Opposition. Again, the Deputy is trying to put words in my mouth. That is not honest politics.

I have always argued that the cause of the housing crisis is multi-factorial. I will not get into that conversation today.

Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.

It is simply not the case that I blamed the Opposition for the housing crisis and it is dishonest politics from the Social Democrats to try to put that across.

50,000 new tenants is dishonest.

In the 11 years during which Fine Gael has been in office, we have built over 100,000 houses, by the way, and we are going to build a lot more over the coming years. I am happy to answer the Deputy's questions, to engage with her in robust debate and hear her criticisms but it is a little bit precious for her to say nobody can say anything back to her and how dare we question her claims and point out the progress being made and how dare we bring some balance to this debate. It is a bit precious-----