It is now more than three years since the then Taoiseach, Deputy Micheál Martin, gave a very clear commitment. In response to questions from my colleague, Deputy Catherine Murphy, he said he was opposed to the State entering long-term leasing deals for social homes. To quote him directly he said, "No local authority should be on the other side of this, engaging in a long lease with these institutional investors.” He followed up that a few weeks later with a very clear statement, "Long-term leasing is bad value. That is my view and I continue to make that clear."

The practice would be phased out, we were told, except it was not. In the Business Post at the weekend, we learned that the State is continuing to enter into these deals and the rents being charged are through the roof. Deals with rents up to €3,200 per month have been agreed. That means that over the course of a 25-year lease, the State is spending more than €900,000 on a single social home. Having spent nearly €1 million to rent it, the State then hands the home back to the developer or the vulture fund. The State pays through the nose and is left with nothing except the bill - no asset, no home. In total, the State has agreed to almost 9,000 of these deals at a combined cost of nearly €3.2 billion. All of these deals come with upward-only rent reviews, which are not subject to caps in rent pressure zones.

You could not make it up. Quite literally, if we wanted to design a worse way to provide social housing, we could not. Every single aspect of the deal is bad for the State and investment funds are loving it. These sweetheart deals are a cash-cow for them. There is literally no downside. They lock in sky-high rents, include upward-only rent reviews and ensure they retain ownership of the asset at the end.

The Taoiseach has spoken a lot recently about common sense. Do these long-term leases sound like common sense to him? Do they sound like value for money? Does he stand over them? Or, if we are honest, are they necessary only because of the failure of this and successive Governments – failure to tackle the housing disaster, failure to meet its social housing targets and failure to deliver on Government commitments? One of those commitments, let us remember, was a promise to phase out long-term leasing. When will the Government end long-term leasing of social homes and when will it actually meet its own new-build social housing targets?

I thank Deputy Cairns for also raising this matter. First, context is important. While I have already outlined the Government's intention to end the use of long-term leasing by the end of 2025, I want anybody watching in at home to be aware that this is a very small part of our overall housing provision and a very small part of our social housing provision.

If the Deputy will allow me a moment, last year we saw the highest annual output of social homes in decades. It is a statement of fact to say that we saw the highest level of new build social housing since 1975. Never in the Deputy's lifetime or my lifetime were more social homes provided than were provided last year. More than 4,000 affordable housing supports were also delivered last year through approved housing bodies, local authorities, the Land Development Agency, the first home scheme, the cost-rental tenant in situ scheme and the vacant property refurbishment grant. This represents a massive increase of 128% on the previous year as well. We now have over 1,600 cost-rental homes being delivered, and funding is in place to support the delivery of more than 4,000 affordable homes by 21 local authorities.

I say this for context because long-term leasing has been an element of housing provision given that in an emergency, you use every tool at your disposal. The Deputy asked what the State gets in return. It gets a roof over the head of some vulnerable citizens needing a house today. That is what it gets because housing policy cannot just be about ideology in an emergency. It has to be about using every single provision-----

It might be funny to laugh and joke over there-----

Does value for money not count?

Can we have the Taoiseach?

I would appreciate that because I doubt Deputy Cairns needs the assistance of Deputies. It might be funny to laugh and titter over there about this but there are real people living in these homes. There are real people with roofs over their heads and they are additional housing solutions that this Government has invested taxpayers' money in providing. When it comes to housing, we take a pragmatic view, unlike some Deputies who rule this and that out. We will use every tool at our disposal to maximise the availability of housing supply for our citizens. That is a good thing to do in an emergency.

However, let us be clear. The views of the Tánaiste are the views of myself as Taoiseach, and are the views of the three parties in this Government. We want to see an end to long-term leasing. We have been clear that the use of long-term leasing will end by the end of 2025. There are figures out there that I do not believe to be accurate. A figure of €3.25 billion has been stated but that is based on the cost of all leasing over 25 years, and it is based on 8,900 operational units. These figures assume that all operational leased units have a remaining term of 25 years. That is not the case. We need to be very careful and accurate about the figures we put out there.

Tut-tut.

It is not, and I do not really know what tut-tutting does.

The Taoiseach reeled off a whole load of figures to say that he wants to give context to the situation but he left out the very important figures that give further context to the situation, which is record homelessness, record house prices and a record number of people stuck in their childhood bedrooms. That context is pretty important as well.

He might be new to the job but Fine Gael certainly is not, and this Government is not. The Taoiseach's party has been in office for 13 years now. Clear commitments have been given, including a commitment to end long-term leasing. The practice of long-term leasing is actually just one of those broken promises. The Taoiseach is now promising that it will be phased out, just like when Deputy Micheál Martin was Taoiseach and promised it would too, three taoisigh ago. The Taoiseach might understand why, to people out there, it feels like the personalities change but the broken promises remain the same. There is fundamental difference between the narrative he is putting out and what the Government is actually doing.

Even yesterday, I heard him on "The Pat Kenny Show" saying that we need at least 50,000 homes per year but the Government's set out target is 33,000, and the Minister for housing is saying that will not change, at least until next year. The Taoiseach is not in opposition. He is the leader of this Government. If he wants to change that, why does he not? Why is this promise to end long-term leasing any different from the last one? What is actually going to change?

I respect the Deputy but I ask her to please not misrepresent my position at all. I never, ever said anywhere that there would be 50,000 homes built this year. Let us not try to create a rift where one does not exist. What I said very clearly is that this country needs to build 250,000 new homes between 2025 and 2030. It does, by the way. The Construction Industry Federation, which has many members involved in building the houses, believes that is eminently doable. I have told the House this afternoon that we have seen 29,000 houses go to construction this year so far, and we have just started the month of May. There are reasons to be hopeful in relation to housing supply, and I absolutely stand by and double down that we will need to lift the scale of ambition in the second half of this decade. There is a very clear process that all three parties in government agree with. We will publish a draft national planning framework in the month of June that will set out indicative headline numbers. That will go out to consultation.

A finalised breakdown and composition of those numbers will be published in the autumn. There is no broken promise in relation to the phasing out of long-term leasing. The exact commitment the Government has consistently given is that it will end by the end of 2025.

At a cost of 3.2 billion.

That figure is not correct.