Deputy McDonald, you are very welcome back.

Go raibh maith agat, a Cheann Comhairle.

I also wish Barry the very best in his tasks and duties.

As the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment knows, workers and families continue to struggle with an unprecedented cost-of-living crisis and households remain under huge pressure, with massive energy bills, grocery bills and fuel prices increasing once again. At the centre of all this are sky-high housing costs. After 12 years of Fine Gael in government, housing has gone from bad to worse, from crisis to emergency to social disaster. So many people find themselves locked out of having an affordable home. On the Government's watch house prices are through the roof and rip-off rents are at record levels.

There has been no help from the Government for hard-pressed mortgage holders hit by a barrage of interest rate hikes. Last Thursday, the ECB announced its tenth interest rate hike since July of last year. These hikes add thousands of euro to annual mortgage repayments. Many homeowners now pay between €3,000 and €6,000 more per year. These are huge sums and a serious shock for homeowners trying to cope with soaring prices across the board. Last week, I spoke to one stressed-out father of two who told me his mortgage repayments have increased from €800 to €1,200 per month. This individual is from Cork, as it happens. I could feel the pressure in his voice when he told me his family has started to cut back on essentials to try to keep up with the massive hikes.

The situation for tens of thousands of homeowners who had their mortgages sold to vulture funds is arguably an even bigger nightmare. Many of these households have seen their interest rates rise to a whopping 10%. Of course, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil supported the sale of these mortgages and promised affected homeowners at the time that they would be no worse off but the truth is they were thrown to the wolves. As homeowners are crucified by these massive interest rate hikes, the banks enjoy bumper profits.

Families make cutbacks to keep up and the retail banks have clocked up eye-watering profits of €5 billion this year. What has the Government done to alleviate the suffering of fleeced homeowners? Nothing, zilch, zip. Its members have played the part of spectators. They have watched on as more and more families are put under incredible pressure. It is farcical for Fine Gael to claim to back homeownership. Under this Government, it has become harder and harder to by your own home or meet mortgage repayments. It is not backing homeownership for a Government to sit on its hands while homeowners are hit with hike after interest rate hike; that is the plain truth. Tá cabhair ag teastáil ag teaghlaigh lena morgáistí anois. Tá géarghá le gníomhartha chun an chabhair sin a thabhairt dóibh. Tá sé in am tacú le moladh Shinn Féin faoiseamh morgáiste a thabhairt d'úinéirí tí atá ag streachailt. The time for action is now.

Tonight, Sinn Féin is bringing a motion before the Dáil calling for the introduction of a targeted, time-limited mortgage interest relief scheme for hard-pressed homeowners. It is a sensible proposal. It is reasonable and proportionate and it can make a difference. My questions to the Minister are simple; will the Government back the motion this evening and will it implement this proposal in next month's budget?

First, I welcome Mr. Barry Ryan and wish him well with his new role. I also welcome Deputy McDonald back to full health. It is good to have her back.

The Government will not support the Sinn Féin mortgage interest relief motion this evening. The day to make a decision regarding how we respond to mortgage holders who are under serious financial pressure is budget day, and we will do that. The Ministers for Finance and Social Protection have both made it clear that they are looking at ways in which we can support households that are under financial pressure because of ten interest rate increases in a row. Many homes in the country are under significant financial pressure as a result of that. I recognise the sentiment behind what the Deputy is proposing. To provide mortgage interest relief for everybody would be enormously expensive and, therefore, if the Government is going to do something in this space, we want it to be targeted and we want to get money to the families who need financial support the most. We will have a budget in three weeks when the Government will respond to the overall issue.

On the broader question of housing, it is important to say that we are seeing significant numbers of first-time buyers now buying their new homes. We have seen approximately 17,500 first-time buyers purchase homes over the past 12 months out of 50,000 or so homes that have been for sale. That is a significant increase on anything we have seen over the past ten or 15 years. We are seeing significant measures funded by Government to support homeownership whether it is the help-to-buy scheme, local authority home loans, the first-time shared equity scheme or by now providing €50,000 or €70,000 in grant aid to actually get vacant or derelict properties back into use. Many of these measures, by the way, are ones that the Deputy's party voted against as, indeed, did other Opposition parties. The Government is absolutely focused on trying to help people to own their own homes and on delivering approximately 5,500 affordable homes this year, which is significantly more than has been provided for a very long time. Of course, we will also deliver in and around 12,000 social homes this year, which is significantly more than anything we have seen since the 1970s. The total housing budget will be approximately €4.5 billion, which is more than double what it was a few years ago.

We do recognise that we continue to have a housing crisis in Ireland. Many households are under pressure but the Government will continue to respond by delivering more in terms of supply. Housing supply increased last year by 45% on the previous year with 30,000 new homes delivered. I also believe we will surpass the target set for this year before the end of the year. That being said, there is still an awful lot more to do. We will continue to focus as our number one priority in terms of domestic policy and response in government to try to support people who are under pressure for housing reasons, whether it is finding a first home, accessing social housing and affordable housing or trying to get out of the nightmare of homelessness on which the Government will also support families.

The Minister's rhetoric and his bluff on the issue of housing convinces precisely nobody. The idea that he would rate the Government's performance on housing as a reflection of housing being its number one priority is truly terrifying if that is the Minister's idea of the Government's best shot at sorting out a crisis that has now been with us for many years. The targets are wrong to begin with. They are insufficient and are not being met. The Government has no sense or capacity to grasp the scale of this crisis and the pace at which we need a response. That is the truth. This crisis has now touched every corner, every aspect, every class and every part of Irish society. People are suffering now. The glib answer that the Government is doing enough and it was better than last year or the year before or the year before that when the lot of you were still making a hames of it then convinces absolutely nobody.

On the issue of mortgage interest relief, of course it has to be targeted. The scheme has to be time bound. There have been ten individual hikes in ECB interest rates. The Minister needs to tell people now that the Government will intervene. If the Government finds Sinn Féin's scheme is not to its liking, then set out what its scheme will look like, to give mortgage holders a break.

In regard to the Deputy's last point, homeowners have a right to hear what the Government proposes to do in terms of supporting them, particularly those who are under significant financial difficulty because of interest rate hikes. The day to do that will be on budget day in three weeks' time rather than this evening. The Government will do that. In regard to the broader housing question, a lot of self-righteous rhetoric is coming from Deputy McDonald on housing. Her own party's performance in Northern Ireland on social housing is not too impressive. Last year, fewer than 1,000 social houses were built in Northern Ireland. The last housing Minister in an Executive was a Sinn Féin housing Minister. Regarding this idea that Sinn Féin has all the answers on housing, look at where it has influence on housing policy and has failed, and continues to fail many people in Northern Ireland. We are setting about the complex task of responding to a growing population where there still are significant housing pressures across a whole range of tenures, from social housing, affordable housing, cost-rental housing, affordable rental or the private housing market. In all of these areas we can only alleviate pressure by increasing supply, which is what we are focusing on doing. We will continue to focus on that and focus most resources on the most vulnerable people. There are far too many homeless individuals and families in Ireland. However, we will continue to focus on ensuring that they get the supports they need while they are homeless but most importantly transition them into social housing as soon as we possibly can by delivering around 12,000 social housing solutions, over 9,000 of which will be new builds this year.