I welcome the good news overnight of the DUP's decision to end its boycott of the institutions. I hope we will now see the executive, the assembly and the North-South institutions up and running before long. It is long overdue, as I am sure all of us in this House can agree.

Tá tithe de dhíth ag daoine ar phraghas réasúnta a cheannach ná a chíosú. Mar sin féin, níl siad ar fáil agus tá an chuma ar an scéal anois go bhfuil an Rialtas don cheathrú bliain i ndiaidh a chéile tar éis teip iomlán a dhéanamh ar na spriocanna a bhí leagtha síos acu ó thaobh praghsanna réasúnta de ar thithe a thógáil. Cén fáth é sin?

As the Taoiseach well knows, a generation of workers, families and young people continue to struggle to put an affordable and secure roof over their heads. Under his Government, the housing crisis has gone from bad to worse, with sky-high house prices, rip-off rents and a severe shortage of housing stock, as again highlighted in research published yesterday by Sherry FitzGerald auctioneers. People who work hard and have done all the right things to create a good future for themselves and their families are crying out for affordable homes to rent or buy. We have come to the bonkers situation where a couple must now earn €127,000 a year to be able to afford a new, average house in the city of Dublin. It is not just a problem in this city. In Galway, people must earn €115,000 a year, while in Cork, the figure is €104,000 a year. This is off-the-wall stuff. It is totally demoralising for people right across the State. Many people who rightly have the aspiration of home ownership are instead forced to remain trapped in the private rental market, where they fork out huge amounts on rent every single month.

These workers, families and young people need real solutions. The best solution is for the Government to drive with ambition the delivery of affordable homes to rent and to buy at a level the scale of the crisis demands. However, last week, the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, published the so-called housing progress report. It has 44 glossy pages, lots of words and lots of numbers but very little information on the delivery of the homes for which the Government is directly responsible. Incredibly, the Minister failed to provide a progress update on the 3,550 genuinely affordable homes to rent or buy that the Government promised to deliver through local authorities and approved housing bodies, AHBs, last year. There is not one word in the report about it. We have complete and utter silence.

The Taoiseach can see why this rings alarm bells. Since the Government came to office, it has missed its affordable housing targets not just in one year but every single year. For four years in a row, the targets have been missed, and the targets were far too low for starters. The lack of pace, ambition and urgency to deliver affordable houses has serious consequences for people. Thousands of adults in their 30s and 40s who want to strike out on their own are living at home with their parents. As we know, young people are leaving in their droves for the chance of a better life and flocking to places like Australia.

The housing affordability crisis is a real barrier for employers hiring workers, schools hiring teachers and hospitals hiring nurses and doctors. The Government and the housing Minister need to come clean with the people. The Minister is hiding behind the number of private homes that developers are building, many of which are totally unaffordable and many of which are still being snapped up by the vulture funds.

When it comes to owning up and telling us what the Government is directly responsible for, there is complete silence. This is a straightforward question. Will the Government meet its target of 3,550 affordable homes that were promised to be delivered through AHBs and local authorities last year or will last year be like every other year of this Government and the targets will be missed once again?

I do not have those numbers available yet but I think they will be available in the next couple of weeks. I want to acknowledge that rents are very high for far too many people in this country and that a lot of people are waiting far too long to be in a position to buy their own home. This is something that the Government is helping with. The rent credit, for example, is worth €750 per renter per year, this year. It was worth €500 per year last year. Many people are claiming that and it is helping them with the rent. We also have the new form of cost-rental housing. This is a form of public housing that allows people to rent at more affordable rates. That is really taking off now and is proving to be very popular. We will see a lot more of that being built around the country in the coming years.

When it comes to first-time buyers, we are helping them with schemes that the Deputy wants to abolish, like the help-to-buy scheme, and the first home scheme. That is making a huge difference. We saw figures come out only in the last couple of days, which show that the number of first-time buyers drawing down their first mortgage is at its highest level since 2007. That is an extraordinary change from where we were only a few years ago. In 2007, I was in my 20s. We are actually back to that now. Those are the kind of numbers that we are now seeing of people buying their first homes, which is really encouraging.

We have also seen a big uptick in the number of new homes being built. More than 33,000 new homes were built last year. That does not include derelict homes brought back into use or student accommodation. We are now seeing numbers that we have not seen in 15 years, in terms of new homes being built, and first-time buyers at a level that I have not seen since I was in my late 20s. That is really encouraging but of course I acknowledge that we are catching up on a period where that was not the case and we have a big deficit yet to close against the backdrop of a rising population.

I do need to mention two things the Deputy said because it is important in this House that we are honest and accurate on the issue of housing. This a sensitive issue and many people are hurting. They do not need misinformation from the Opposition or from any other quarter. The Deputy said that a couple must earn €127,000 per year to buy a new house in Dublin. That creates a false impression. First, the particular survey the Deputy referenced refers to three-bedroom homes only and to new homes only. Most first-time buyers do not buy new homes. They buy second-hand homes for the obvious reason that they are less expensive. Many first-time buyers buy two-bed homes, not three-bed. The Deputy is picking a particular example with three different caveats and then trying to make out that is the case for everyone when he knows it is not. The survey also made the assumption that people can only borrow 3.3 times their income. The Deputy knows that is not the case any more. It also did not take into account the Government's first home scheme, which closes the affordability gap for so many people. The Deputy created a false impression and he should not do so. Quite frankly, he should not have to do so.

The Deputy pushed the narrative that enormous numbers of young Irish people are leaving Ireland to go overseas because of the housing crisis and that this is a one-way street. We know of course that is not a one-way street. While 80,000 Irish citizens left to live abroad for many different reasons in the past three years, 90,000 came back. We know that if we look at places like Australia and cities like Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra, the ratios of house prices to income are much the same as they are in Ireland.

I did mention that it was a new house and I talked about an average three-bedroom house, so let us be clear about that. I also said that it is unacceptable. I genuinely believe that it is unacceptable that a person has to earn €127,000 to buy a new, average three-bedroom house in this city. It is unacceptable that a person has to earn more than €100,000 to buy in Cork where the Minister sitting beside the Taoiseach is from. We have an affordability crisis. The Taoiseach did not mention that the CSO talked last week about the fact that house prices have gone up another 10% in the past 12 months. That is the reality. A sizeable number of people feel locked out of the housing market. The Taoiseach may dismiss the fact that 21,000 young people left to go to Australia last year. That is just one area; they are going to Canada, London and elsewhere. Some of them have done what young people have done before them, to go for adventure and experience, but there is a sense that people are locked out and they have to put their lives on hold because of the runaway house prices that the Government is overseeing.

I asked the Taoiseach a simple question, which he just batted off by saying, "I do not have that information." This goes to the core of the matter. The Government has responsibility for the delivery of social and affordable homes. It had a target of 3,550 to be delivered last year. It produced a glossy 44-page document without a single utterance of whether it has failed to meet its target, the same way it failed to meet its target in every single one of the preceding three years. Will the Government again fail to deliver on its target for affordable homes just like it and the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage in their first four years in office?

Hear, hear.

The statement the Deputy made earlier was not correct because he did not take account of the first home scheme. The whole point of the scheme established by the Government is to close the affordability gap, where there is a gap between what a new house costs to buy and what a person can get in a mortgage. If we take into account the first home scheme, which thousands of people are now using and which Sinn Féin wants to abolish, it is possible for a couple on an income below €127,000 to buy those homes mentioned by the Deputy. It is even there in the survey if he chooses to read it. There is a little asterisk that notes it does not take account of the first home scheme. People all over the country are now using the scheme to buy new homes and it is wrong that Sinn Féin and the left want to abolish it and take that opportunity away from first-time buyers.

On our housing targets, more than 30,000 new homes were built last year, the highest number in 15 years. Some 500 first-time buyers are drawing down mortgages per week, the most we have seen since I was in my late 20s. That is what we are seeing in the market. There is more social housing than in any year since the 1970s. We do not have exact figures for cost-rental and affordable houses yet but we will and I am sure there will be more of them than in the previous year.

The Government will miss its target again.