I want to raise with the Taoiseach the stark reality of Government failure to deliver on housing. This is a failure acknowledged even within the ranks of Government. On Saturday, The Irish Times reported the comments of a Fianna Fáil backbencher who described the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage's multitude of half-baked schemes as follows: "They make great headlines, but they’re simply not backed up by volume." I could hardly put it better myself.

Thirty thousand houses last year.

It seems that the Minister for announcements and glossy pamphlets over there is so preoccupied with repackaged launches that he has lost sight of the need to deliver real homes. What we are seeing is a chronic failure of delivery which has compounded housing distress for so many people and so many families. I am thinking of two particular families I am dealing with at the moment. One comprises a father and daughter who is a wheelchair user. The father is renting a second-floor studio that is inaccessible. He has to carry his daughter up a narrow and unsafe staircase each time they come home. He has answered several hundred advertisements on daft.ie but cannot even get a viewing.

The other family is a mother and her two young children. She says her mind has gone to a very dark place due to her inability to secure a safe, affordable home for herself and her children that is near to her parents for whom she is a carer. These are just two of the families. I know all of us in the House hear from families with similar distressing stories and experiences because the chronic housing shortage is causing real suffering.

Upon taking office in December, the Taoiseach pledged to go all out and take a "let's do everything" approach to housing. The Tánaiste said we have turned a corner on the crisis. The Taoiseach is on record as saying that we are at least on the cusp of turning a corner. The reality is that the Government is nowhere near the corner. It continues to move at a snail's pace with a real failure to deliver. It is more focused on policy launches than the physical delivery of homes.

I will give some specific examples. Last August, the Government came under pressure when leaks exposed the lack of measures for renters in the budget. In response, the Minister announced a €500 renters' tax credit. The Government was warned then that this would not deliver the affordability and security of tenure that renters need and that would have been better brought about by, for example, the Labour Party's renters' rights Bill, which the Government did not oppose. It went ahead with the credit and news broke last week that half of renters have still not claimed that credit. Clearly it was not the measure that renters needed.

In March, the Government lifted the temporary no fault eviction ban without any evidence or any contingency plan in place. It then announced another sticking plaster, a first refusal scheme for renters where the landlord is selling. It was warned that it would do nothing for the majority of people who receive an eviction notice. Incredibly, three months later, we still have no detail on how the scheme will work. I am still hearing from families desperate to buy their homes and they cannot do so. We continue to see missed building targets, unspent departmental budgets and rising homelessness.

Will the Taoiseach accept that the renters' credit was the wrong measure and instead pass legislation to protect renters? Will the Taoiseach say when the first refusal scheme will actually come into effect? When will the legislation even be published? What is the blockage on delivery in the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage?

I acknowledge that we have a very significant shortage and deficit of housing in Ireland and that the country is experiencing a very deep housing crisis that affects people in many ways, whether high rents, rising homelessness or the difficulty many people face in being able to buy their first home. The housing crisis is a reality for many reasons. These are a rapidly rising population, smaller household sizes which mean we need more homes and a prolonged period during which very little housing was built after the crash in 2008. We are catching up on that deficit now and I will give a few examples. Last year 30,000 new homes were built, more than any year in ten or 13 years. There has been very significant progress there. We expect to meet our housing targets again this year. Last year more social housing was added to the housing stock than in any year since the 1970s. The recent census figures show the percentage of households benefiting from social housing increased in the past ten years and did not go down. This totally destroys the argument that this Government and the previous Government were somehow uninterested in social housing.

Some 40,000 more families are in social housing than there were ten years ago. The percentage of people benefiting from social housing has gone up, not down, which proves that this Government and the previous one have been committed to social housing.

We are making progress on homeownership too. More than 1.2 million families now own their own homes in Ireland. About 400 first-time buyers are buying their first homes every week. That is because of the actions the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, has taken. For example, the help-to-buy scheme helps people to get their deposit. The local authority home loans help people to get a loan if they cannot get one from the bank. There is huge interest in the new grants that are being offered to bring derelict properties back into use as new homes. There are other measures, particularly championed by this Minister, such as first home, a new scheme that bridges the gap between the mortgage one can get from the bank and the cost of buying the home one wants to buy. All of those things are making a difference. That is why we are seeing more people buying their first home every week than at any period since the Celtic tiger. We are catching up on a huge deficit and it will take time for us to get ahead of it.

The rent credit was in the budget. It is €500 for a single person, €1,000 for a couple and €1,500 if there are three people renting. As is the case with any tax credit, people have up to four years to claim it. It is hard to know exactly how many are entitled to it. We think about 400,000 people are entitled to it. About half have claimed it. Others can claim it too. We will be advertising it and putting out further information for the Revenue Commissioners to make people know that is available.

The Taoiseach has listed a multitude of schemes but we see a yawning gap in the delivery of homes as a result of those schemes, which is the issue. It is an issue for everyone, including for renters and, as the Taoiseach has acknowledged, for those who wish to buy homes too. We see the report today that single first-time buyers must earn at least €67,000 a year in order to even qualify for a mortgage. We see single people locked out of homeownership and we see renters in crisis, yet the Government is failing to spend the full budget for housing. Last year, it failed to spend 25% of the social and affordable housing budget. The total spend on housing amounted to €1 billion less than the budgetary allocation. Given the scale of the crisis, which the Taoiseach has acknowledged, why are these budgets going unspent? Will he redirect funds into, for example, recruiting more construction workers to ensure increased capacity? Will he cut the red tape and enable local authorities to build homes, as they did before at a time when we saw really serious numbers of homes being built every year?

The reality is that the housing crisis is not improving under the Government despite the multitude of announcements of new schemes. We still see money going unspent and homelessness figures rising. I ask the Taoiseach again where the blockage is in the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage and why we are not seeing delivery.

I heard the Deputy say that single first-time buyers have to earn €67,000 to buy their first home. The Deputy may have misread it or there may have been a different interpretation. I think the figure is that the median or average income of people buying their first home is €67,000. That, by definition, means that at least half of the people who bought their first home earn less than €67,000. These things are often very poorly reported but if the median is €67,000, at least half have to earn less than €67,000 for that to be true.

I think it is nitpicking.

It is true. I am sorry. I know I will be criticised for explaining these things but sometimes when things are factually untrue, it is legitimate to point out what is actually meant by average and median for people who may not fully understand it.

The €3.5 billion budget for housing is the biggest budget ever. If there is any reason that we are struggling to spend it, it is because the budget is so large. That is evidence of the Government's commitment to dealing with the housing crisis.

There are 9,000 apprentices this year, which is the highest in a very long time. The Minister, Deputy Harris, is leading on that and making sure we increase the number of apprentices. Work permits and visas are being issued to allow people to enter the State and work in construction. Planning rules are being changed so local authorities can build social housing more quickly.