I acknowledge Mr. Noel Murphy, the outgoing superintendent, and thank him personally for all his immense support and friendship. It has been a pleasure to work with him and we will miss him in the Houses. I wish him and his family well on his retirement.

It appears that the Government is now determined to proceed with the lifting of the no-fault eviction ban from this Saturday, which is in two days' time. While many Ministers were busy castigating the Labour Party for daring to offer constructive ways of addressing the housing crisis yesterday in the Dáil, during that debate I received yet another communication from a constituent who is in dire need. She is a university student. Her parents work in healthcare and construction. They do not qualify for HAP or the rental accommodation scheme, RAS. They are in private rental accommodation, their landlord is selling, and they have nowhere to go from Saturday. She appealed to me because she told me they have applied to countless houses all around Dublin in the hope they would find something to rent, but with no luck. They have looked at their other options. The have approached the council, Threshold and Citizens Information, which do not have clarity on the measures we heard Government was proposing to introduce.

I thank the Deputy. Her time is up.

What am I to tell her? What are the measures? What is the safety net for my constituent and so many thousands of others facing homelessness in two days' time?

Approximately 1,000 units have either been provided or are in the pipeline of being provided-----

They are in the pipeline.

-----in respect of the tenant in situ scheme. The council is very clear in respect of the tenant in situ scheme. I am not clear on the background to the case the Deputy raised, but the council has the capacity to buy that house.

On behalf of the Social Democrats, I send our best wishes to Noel Murphy and thank him for all his years of public service,

The Taoiseach has put very misleading information into the public domain about the courts and eviction notices. He stated that it is "very, very rare" that a judge would evict an individual family into homelessness. However, solicitors specialising in housing law working at the coalface supporting renters have said they do not know of any cases at all in Ireland where a judge sided with renters facing homelessness and did not grant an eviction order. There were none, not a single case. The chief executive of Free Legal Advice Centres, FLAC, Ms Eilis Barry, said she is worried that the comments from the Taoiseach have given people false hope. Ms Barry stated that neither the courts nor the Residential Tenancies Board have any discretion or the ability to take humanitarian grounds such as illness, disability or age into consideration.

Does the Tánaiste agree that it is very important that renters facing eviction are given accurate advice and information? Will he ask the Taoiseach to withdraw his highly misleading comments, which do not reflect the reality of what is happening on the ground and, indeed, do not reflect the reality of what is legally permissible?

In the first instance, I pay tribute to Noel Murphy and thank him for his service to the Oireachtas. Very often, it is the people behind the scenes who keep the wheels of parliamentary democracy moving so efficiently and effectively. I thank him very much. I wish him and his family the best of happiness and good health in retirement.

In respect of the issues raised by Deputy O'Callaghan, in an earlier era with pressures on mortgages and so on, it is striking that Ireland was perceived at a European level to have had the least number of repossessions, for example. That generally is the case. It is perceived generally to be a country that puts a premium on people staying in their family homes.

That said, I take the Deputy's point that we must provide as accurate and precise advice to renters as we possibly can. However, we must also provide alternatives and interventions in terms of both preventing homelessness but also facilitating the exit from homelessness, which we are doing with significant increased outcomes.

Last year alone, the figure I mentioned earlier represented a 25% increase in the number of people who were helped out of homelessness.

Will the Tánaiste talk to the Taoiseach about what he said?

I will raise with him the point the Deputy has made.