We have had a housing crisis for more than a decade. It is a social catastrophe driven by the political choices made by Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil in that time. The situation is especially acute for our young people, for public services and for business. It is crystal clear that the Government does not appreciate the scale of the challenge. What is needed is a major step change from the Government to deal with the crisis. The measures the Taoiseach announced earlier today see Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil continue to tinker around the edges of this emergency. Their big idea is to hand private developers €1 billion in public money, with absolutely no detail. This is back-of-the-envelope, threadbare stuff. Worse still, there is no guarantee that it will deliver genuinely affordable homes to rent or buy. There is not one extra cent for local authorities or approved housing bodies.

Let me be very clear: we need private builders building homes that ordinary people can afford to buy, but Government overreliance on the private sector is not the answer. The answer to the housing crisis - the game-changing answer - is for the State to intervene directly to build thousands of homes on public land. What we need is for the Government to initiate a massive scaling up of affordable and social housing; what we get is a Government scrambling about, clutching at straws and trying to save a failed housing plan. It is doubling down on failure. Rents are extortionate, house prices are through the roof, and rising mortgage interest rates put the possibility of buying a home beyond the reach of so many first-time buyers. The only defining decision the Government has taken, at a time when people struggle to put a roof over their heads, is to lift the eviction ban. It still cannot answer the question as to where people are to go.

I will tell the Taoiseach about one of those people, a woman with whom I am dealing directly. Her name is Jasmine Graham. She is a retail worker and the mother of two young children. The family have been evicted and now share one small bedroom in a bed and breakfast. She has searched desperately for an alternative place to live but to no avail. In fact, the council asked her if she had a car to sleep in. Jasmine's youngest child is four and half and has been waiting three years for a diagnosis of autism. He finds it really hard to cope in a cramped space. Her other son, who is nine, is suffering stomach pains as a result of anxiety. Jasmine says it is hard for her but that it is especially hard for the boys. She tries to stay strong for them. "I have no other choice", she says.

Inniu, feicimid an Rialtas ag athdhearbhú plean tithíochta atá teipthe. Seo an réiteach mícheart. Tá athrú ó bhonn ag teastáil. Ní mór don Stát idirghabháil a dhéanamh le méadú ollmhór ar thithe ar phraghas réasúnta agus tithíocht shóisialta a bhaint amach. The Taoiseach's decision to subsidise private developers to the tune of €1 billion is simply the wrong call. It will not solve the housing crisis. What does the Taoiseach say to Jasmine and the many families who cannot find a place to live? Where are they to go? When will Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil finally learn the lesson that what we need is a massive scaling up of affordable and social housing and the State to intervene to build thousands of homes on public land?

Housing for All, which is the Government's housing plan, has had a really good start. At the moment, 300 to 400 people are buying their first homes every week.

That is the highest number since the Celtic tiger period. It gives me a lot of hope and confidence that we are going to be able to turn the tide on home ownership into the future. Some 30,000 new homes were built last year, and we expect a similar number to be built this year. That is more than have been built in over a decade. We are building public housing. We built more social housing last year than in any year since the 1970s, and more than Sinn Féin has ever built in Northern Ireland. We are going to build more again this year. That is our commitment. We are doing all of those things. After a slowdown last year in commencements, we have seen the number of commencements bouncing back in the past three months. The number of new homes being started is increasing again, which, I imagine, is a matter of concern for Sinn Féin. We are also likely to meet our overall supply target again this year, with more than 29,000 new homes expected to be built. That does not include student accommodation or derelict homes being brought back into use.

We need to do more. We understand the scale and depth of the crisis. We understand that people are suffering. That is why the Government decided earlier today to do more. As I have said many times, our mission is to restore the social contract and make home ownership affordable again. What we have decided to do today flows from the interim advice given to the Government by the Housing Commission in February, the housing summit I hosted with the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, in January and the ideas that have come from the three Government parliamentary parties. First, it is about reducing the cost of construction - the cost of building a new home. Second, it is about increasing the pace at which derelict and vacant properties are brought back into use. It is also about the Government co-funding the construction of apartments for affordable rental and cost rental, which is a new form of public ownership brought into existence by this Government.

The Deputy's charge is predictable but it is not true. One of the things we announced earlier is that we are going to increase the grants we give to people to enable them to bring vacant and derelict properties back into use to €50,000 and €70,000, respectively. That is not giving money to developers; it is giving money to young people and not-so-young people to bring vacant properties back into use in order that they can live in them or, in some cases, rent them out. I cannot believe Sinn Féin is against that. The Deputies opposite should not be against that; they should be supporting us in respect of it. Another decision we made today is to waive development levies for a year. This move is designed to stimulate and bring forward construction. Among those who will benefit from that are people throughout urban and rural Ireland who are building their own homes. I cannot believe Sinn Féin is against those people, as appears to be the case. When it comes to removing the development levies for schemes, the effect of what we are doing will be that instead of the cost of public infrastructure - footpaths, roads, community centres, playgrounds and open spaces - being imposed on developers and home purchasers, it will be socialised instead. We are saying that this is a public good, that this is public infrastructure and that we are going to pay for it out of taxes because we can afford to do so. It is remarkable that a party that claims to be what Sinn Féin claims to be could be against all those things.

Of course the removal of the development levies is a viability measure. It carries with it no guarantee of a reduction in cost to the end buyer. In other words, it does absolutely nothing in terms of the affordability dilemma. I do not know whether to be more taken aback by the Taoiseach's sense of self-congratulation or the obvious inertia in which he wallows at this point. Where I come from, Housing for All is more popularly known as housing for no one. That is the experience of people on the ground. The Government has set targets that are too low and it does not even meet them. There are sky-high house costs and sky-high rents. Today, the Government has come forward and, with a whole fanfare, announced its big idea. That big idea is actually a very small idea that is not going to have the required impact to ensure that people will be able to access homes at an affordable level. The Taoiseach clearly has no answer for Jasmine or other families as to where they might go. I ask the Taoiseach why there is no additional money for local authorities and approved housing bodies in the Government's big idea.

Because only a few weeks ago we provided funding to local authorities to purchase 1,500 homes where landlords are selling up. That money has not yet all been drawn down.

If they draw it down, there will be more. Only a few weeks ago, we announced an increase in the amount of social homes we will provide this year through long-term leasing. The announcement today is not the totality of what we are doing on housing. Only a few weeks ago, we announced that additional money for local authorities. What we announced today is additional funding to bring derelict properties and vacant properties back into use. That is going to make a big difference all over Ireland and I hope the Deputy will support it. What we have also announced today is a removal of development levies for a year, designed to encourage and accelerate the amount of new building happening, saying that the taxpayer that can afford to will cover the cost of that public infrastructure with a view to bringing down the cost of construction and the cost of new housing. That should be the kind of thing the Deputy should be for. A much better Opposition party would be saying, "We welcome all the things you are doing but we would like you to do these as well."

You will have your chance soon enough.

Sinn Féin is not doing that, however. It does not have a housing plan. Its only housing plan is a change of Government and that is totally vacuous and empty.

This country is facing a housing disaster of epic proportions, with a shortage of homes that is exacerbating generational divides and inequality, affecting health outcomes and the education system and stifling job growth. Today, the Government is casting more money into yet another package of additional measures on housing which the Taoiseach says will deliver results but which represents the latest in a series of desperate efforts to kick some life into the Government's housing policy. It is yet another attempt to tweak the Housing for All policy which the Taoiseach must accept is failing. Indeed, it is a tacit acceptance that Housing for All is failing and has not delivered results, that the Government is out of its depth and lacks ambition, urgency and, crucially, any impact on the housing disaster. We have not seen the delivery and results that people require. Instead, the Government continues to throw good money after bad while nothing changes for those who are desperately seeking a home, confined to childhood bedrooms because they cannot afford to move out of their parents' homes or stuck paying exorbitant rents in tiny cramped bedsits. Since the indefensible lifting of the eviction ban, many more people are now facing the abyss of homelessness because they have been served an eviction notice and there are no contingency plans in place from the Government.

Among the tweaked measures announced today is a temporary waiver of development contributions. In effect, it is yet another unconditional subsidy for developers. I listened carefully to the Taoiseach's response to Deputy McDonald. He referred to people building their own homes but it is not limited to people building their own homes; presumably it will apply to all developers. The Taoiseach described it as socialising community cost, which is an extraordinary way to characterise what is an unconditional grant and subsidy to developers. Over-reliance on the private sector has simply failed, so why is the Government continuing to throw good money after bad in this way? Why is it not committing massive State investment in local authorities and approved housing bodies? Why is it not committing State investment in the delivery of social and affordable homes? Does it believe developers will pass on the benefit of this new subsidy to first-time buyers? Will the Government be requiring them to do so? Will a condition be placed on this subsidy? That is the sort of measure that should be introduced by the Government in this housing disaster. Today's package also included grants intended to tackle vacancy and dereliction but, again, this is tweaking. I presume the vacant housing plan launched in January has also failed and that is why these measures are being tweaked again.

What we are seeing is a series of piecemeal additions to the failed housing policy from this Government. Does the Taoiseach accept that the new package of measures amounts to no more than tweaking the edges of a plan that has no proven success and has certainly not delivered for the more than 11,700 people who are now in homelessness?

I fundamentally disagree with the Deputy on this. We have a very deep housing crisis that is affecting individuals and families in so many different ways. It is not about public versus private or people who want to buy their home against people who are in social housing.

Deputy Bacik did not say that.

If we are going to solve the housing crisis, we need to maximise the amount of public housing we build and we also need to maximise the amount of private housing we build. It is not an either-or situation. Only in the past few weeks, we announced increased investment for local authorities to provide more social housing and to purchase houses off landlords who are selling up, therefore making it social housing.

We only announced that a few weeks ago. What we have announced today is increased grants for people who bring vacant and derelict properties back into use and a temporary waiver of development levies to bring down the cost of construction. All those measures together make sense. It is not what the Opposition thinks: public versus private-----

That is not what we think.

-----and pitting people who want to buy their home against people on the housing list. We need to help everyone. The plan is Housing for All; it is public and private and involves us doing as much as we can possibly do on both tracks.

I disagree with the Deputy's analysis. Housing for All has had a very good start. More social housing was built last year than in any year since the 1970s. Surely that is significant. We need to do better again this year. The thing that encourages me most is that about 400 people are buying their first homes every week. That is probably an underestimate. I can go into detail on that if the Deputy wishes. We have not seen that since the Celtic tiger period. Surely the Deputy should be welcoming that. Why not acknowledge progress when it is being made? It is fair enough to say that we need to do more or that we need to be quicker about what we are doing. Why try to pretend or gaslight people into thinking that no progress has been made? There is a record level of social housing – the highest since the 1970s. Some 30,000 new homes were built last year, and now we see 400 people buying their first homes each week. Surely this is progress that should be acknowledged.

The Taoiseach can dress up the figures any way he likes, but we are in housing disaster of epic proportions.

They are facts.

There is no doubt about that. Can the Taoiseach say how many new homes will be delivered as a result of today's latest series of tweaked measures? The Taoiseach has accused the Labour Party of lacking confidence. With a fifth Fine Gael Deputy announcing earlier today that he is jumping ship, it looks like there is a lack of confidence on the opposite side of the House.

Let us see how many of Deputy Bacik's Deputies run.

There is certainly a lack of confidence in the capacity of the Government to deliver on housing. We have seen no ambition, no sense of urgency and, to date, no results. We have seen no evidence basis for decision-making. I got figures by means of a freedom of information request last week which show that the Residential Tenancies Board data on notices to quit, which were supposed to be supplied on 10 March, were delayed for a few weeks until after debates in the Dáil on the lifting of the eviction ban and the no-confidence motion. Was political pressure applied to the Residential Tenancies Board to delay publication of those data? Why is the Government so averse to evidence-based decision-making? Why can it not simply devote and commit the massive resources of the State, which is running a budget surplus of more than €5 billion, to an ambitious housing plan that will see delivery for the more than 11,700 people who are homeless?

There was no political pressure applied. I am happy to confirm that once again. The Labour Party has six or seven Deputies. She may not know this yet, but I imagine she will find that two of those will not be contesting the next election. That is roughly a third, which is quite a lot. People move on and retire, and they have the right to do so.

Tá an plean Tithíocht do Chách ag obair. Tá os cionn 400 daoine ag ceannach a gcéad teach gach seachtain, an líon is airde ó thréimhse an tíogair Cheiltigh. Tá an uimhir tithe sóisialta is fearr againn ó na seachtóidí agus tá tosaigh ag preabadh ar ais arís, Tá a fhios agam go gcaithfimid níos mó a dhéanamh. Baineann an pacáiste tithíochta atá aontaithe ag an Rialtas inniu le Tithíocht do Chách a luathú. Tagann sé ón gcomhairle don Rialtas ón gCoimisiún Tithíochta agus ón gcruinniú Feabhra tithíochta, a tharla siar i mí Eanáir. Tá sé faoi thrí rudaí: an costas tógála a laghdú; an luas a dhéantar athchóiriú ar fhoirgnimh atá folamh a mhéadú; agus maoiniú Rialtais chun árasáin a thógáil ar cíos inacmhainne.