Seven months of public outrage and protests have finally forced the Government to recognise the state of Palestine. I hope that is going to be accompanied by sanctions.

I wish to discuss another protest that will happen this Saturday at the Custom House over the Government’s failed housing policies. This comes at an appropriate moment, given that the Housing Commission has confirmed what the dogs on the street know, namely, that the Government has made a catastrophic mess of the housing situation, resulting in untold housing misery for hundreds of thousands of working people, young people and the 13,500 people languishing in homelessness. It is no surprise to me that, while the Government received this report some time ago, it did not publish it. It is an outrage that journalists have it and can read it but TDs cannot. What is clear is that the report is utterly damning of the Government’s housing policy failures. The references are fairly familiar at this point, but they are worth reiterating: ineffective decision-making; spending more than most other European countries but getting less; a chronic deficit of 250,000 houses compared with what we need; the failure of the Government’s rent pressure zones to control rents; the Government’s failure to deliver enough social and affordable housing; and the need for an emergency response, something that we in the Opposition have been appealing to the Government to adopt for years. The most telling part of the whole report is where it reads “the overall strategy to successfully achieve a sustainable housing system is not complicated.” The Government has managed not only to complicate it, but to make a dog’s dinner of it, resulting in a great deal of misery, suffering and hardship.

The core of the problem is that most of the housing in this country is delivered by private landlords, private developers and private investors who are interested in profit, not in putting affordable roofs over people’s heads. Some of them actively engage in speculation on housing, vacant properties and land. The Government’s policy is to pour approximately €1 billion every year into various subsidies, including HAP, RAS and leasing, for landlords who still fail to deliver the housing we need, with anything they do deliver being unaffordable in terms of rents and house prices.

Is the Government going to accept the need for a radical reset of policy that would prioritise the delivery of social and affordable housing, control rents to make them affordable and introduce “use it or lose it” policies on vacant and derelict properties in order to stop the profiteering of property investors and speculators?

We will publish the Housing Commission report today. It is a bit old-fashioned, but it is useful to read things before commenting on them with such authority. Before the Deputy wraps himself in the recommendations of the report, I recommend that he read them. I received the report last night. There are 83 recommendations, 500 actions and subactions, 400 pages of text and three years of work. There is not even unanimous agreement on all of the actions by all of the members of the commission. I am not sure the Deputy will agree with all of the recommendations either, by the way. The idea has been put forward in this House – quite successfully, in fairness to the Opposition – over the past 24 hours that it is a binary choice of whether we accept or reject the commission’s report. I look forward to asking the various Deputies that question next Tuesday. I do not think there is any party in this House that will accept in full every recommendation because there were many members of the commission who did not seem to accept all of the recommendations either. Let us publish the report today, read the report and debate the report.

The Minister for housing should also publish an update on where we are at in respect of each of the 83 recommendations because there is a radical reset of housing policy under way. That is why we have a Land Development Agency. That is why we have record social housing building. It is the largest amount ever in my lifetime and the largest amount in 50 years. That is why we have cost rental schemes. That is why we are seeing 337 new homes going to construction every working day this year. That is why we have had more than 30,000 homes commence construction so far this year as well.

Deputy Boyd Barrett talked about incentivising private developers. The report is very clear. Just to be clear for the Deputy on this matter before he talks about the-----

The Taoiseach has probably read it.

I have read it because that is the useful thing to do-----

We have not had a chance yet.

-----when one is Taoiseach. When one gets a report the night before, one reads it.

The Government gave it to the press, not to us.

I would advise the Deputy to read it when it is published, too, and then we can have a more informed discussion on it because the report very clearly talks about the need for diverse funding models. Yes, we need and have record levels of Exchequer development, but this idea of private investment and diverse sources of investment being the devil incarnate is not what the report has found. It is just the Deputy’s political view of the world.

We asked 12 people to come together. We asked them to do three years of work. They did it and we should be grateful to them. Let us read the terms of reference as well. We asked them to outline what housing policy post 2030 should look like. That just keeps getting airbrushed. This is 2024, so we are not post 2030. Everyone is just jumping to asking why we have not done everything in the Housing Commission report. It is not post 2030 and I have not had a chance to analyse all of the recommendations yet. So, let us read the report and consider it.

We need to continue in the here and now to do everything we can to help people who are trying to buy their own homes. That is why we are now seeing a very significant increase in housing supply, a very significant increase in social housing supply, and a very significant increase in the incentives available to people that the Deputy is not in favour of in terms of the help to buy scheme and the first-time buyers scheme.

I take the point that the Deputy makes about some of the rental supports, the wish for those not to be a permanent destination for people and the need to get people secure accommodation, be it social, affordable or private, but I also get the point that he raises with me on a very regular basis in this House – probably once per week – about the need to continue with those supports and the need to reform and improve them further.

For those who are not convinced by the Taoiseach's answer, the housing protest will be outside Custom House at 2.30 p.m. this Saturday. I hope people will come out onto the streets for it.

No one disputes that there will be a private sector in housing, but the private sector should not be subsidised at the expense of delivering the social and affordable housing that it is incapable of delivering. The majority of Government policy is about giving subsidies to private developers and speculators who are incapable and unwilling to deliver affordable housing at the expense of the social and affordable housing we actually need. That is a crazy policy. The Government needs to accept that current house prices and rents are unaffordable for approximately 60% to 70% of ordinary working people. The market the Government subsidises and incentivises by pouring billions of euro into the private sector’s pockets is not delivering housing that is affordable. Therefore, the Government needs a radical reset. That is what the commission report says. Admit the policy is failing, break from it, reset and begin to direct the State’s resources, which are plentiful, towards building social and affordable housing and controlling the obscene rents being charged by these property investment funds and corporate landlords.

The Deputy is picking one line out of approximately 400 pages of a report, which I accept he has not had an opportunity to get or read yet, but what I would suggest-----

I have been phoning the journalist to try to get it.

We will be publishing it today. When the Deputy sees the actions, he will see that many of them are under way. We agree with many of them, by the way. Many of them are in line with Government policy. Many of them are things that we are working on right now.

The Government voted down a land price registry.

There are some with which I am not sure Deputy O'Callaghan will fully agree.

The Government voted down our proposals on a land price registry.

Deputy, please.

There are some with which I am not sure Deputy Boyd Barrett will agree either.

I do not think it will be a case of every single recommendation meeting the satisfaction of every political viewpoint in this House but there are good ideas here. We need good ideas. We need to be open to listening to new ideas. We should never be so complacent or arrogant to suggest, when it comes to housing, that we do not want them. There is good stuff there that we will advance. There is also stuff there that we may not be fully convinced of and there is stuff there the Deputy may not be fully convinced of either. When it comes to housing, we are open for business when it comes to new ideas. That is what the Housing Commission is helpful in relation to. That is why we set it up in the first place and that is why we look forward to engaging on it.

Let us have 50% social and affordable on all developments, as we have asked for.

I call Deputy Shanahan.

Go raibh maith agat, a Cheann Comhairle.

Let us have 50% social and affordable of all housing.

There is somebody else in possession now.