There are 48,000 homes vacant between the two censuses. They should be getting charged the tax.

I wish to ask the Taoiseach about long-term leasing deals. A US investor has paid €75 million to buy up a Dublin social housing portfolio consisting of 156 apartments. That is almost €500,000 for each apartment. Investors are willing to shell out such huge sums as the State has guaranteed the return on their investment through long-term leases. Long-term leases are exceptionally bad value for money and turn social housing into a commodity for investors to trade. The State pays back the entire cost to the investor buying up these homes while the private investor retains complete and utter ownership. Would it not be much better to use our resources to build more social homes instead of signing up to these lucrative long-term leasing deals for investors?

Our preference is to build social housing and that is exactly what we are doing - building thousands of new social homes every year, whether it is through councils or approved housing bodies. In some cases, we will purchase them. That makes sense too, particularly in areas where it is less expensive to purchase a home than to build one. There is a role for leasing, too, but it is not the main part of what we are doing as a Government. What we are doing is scaling up the number of new builds. I cannot remember the exact figure for this year but it is maybe 6,000 or 7,000. It will be higher again next year.