The Taoiseach has confirmed we will have an election in a matter of weeks, and with that, this Government’s disastrous handling of the housing crisis will be on the ballot. A vote for this Government will be a vote for record house prices, record rents, record homelessness and over 500,000 adults living in their childhood bedrooms. Every week, this crisis deepens and deteriorates. House prices are now rising by double digits, 10% per year. Nationally, first-time buyers are facing median house prices of €345,000 and a staggering €462,000 in Dublin.

Who can afford these kinds of prices and relentless increases? As soon as people think they have scraped and scrimped enough to buy, the prices change again and the goalposts shift. This is why people are losing hope. No matter how hard they work, save or try to do everything right, it is never enough. Every month, house prices climb even higher. Since this Government took office, median house prices have increased by €85,000. That is more than €20,000 added to the cost of a home every single year. Does the Taoiseach think people's salaries are increasing at that rate? Are teachers, nurses and gardaí, for example, getting their pay bumped by €20,000 a year? That is what they need just to stand still. To make matters worse and, frankly, just confusing, the Government keeps telling them its plan is working. It is only working if its plan is soaring house prices, and that is a plan that only works for developers and vulture funds.

Last week, the Social Democrats launched our affordable housing plan. It is fully costed, credible and deliverable. Under our plan, three-bedroom homes could be delivered in Dublin for less than €300,000 per year. In the rest of the country, prices would be below €260,000. The people buying these homes would own their home and the land it is built on. Affordable rental is also a key component of the plan. Over the term of the next Government, we would deliver 75,000 of these genuinely affordable homes. The Social Democrats want to go into government, not to make up the numbers but to treat housing like the emergency it is and to take radical action to address it. The Taoiseach said at the weekend that we need 60,000 homes a year. That has been obvious to everybody other than his Government for a long time. The key question is not the target but how we will get there and how people on average incomes will be able to buy them.

Does the Taoiseach think house price increases of more than €20,000 per year are sustainable or affordable in any way? Does he accept that Government policy is driving record house prices?

I thank Deputy Cairns.

I definitely agree with the Deputy on one point, which is that politics and the next election certainly cannot be about who comes up with the biggest figure in terms of the number of homes they are going to deliver because the public will rightly see through that. People will be much more interested in the how. That is absolutely right. Deputy Cairns said everybody knows we need 60,000 homes. That is kind of neither here nor there. What people need to know is how we are going to get there. The idea that we could have gone from a low base of under 7,000 homes being built in 2011, to 60,000 homes any earlier than now, is not borne out by any evidence. I would be very happy to meet the housing expert and the construction expert who would counter that point. We are in a situation now where we will see close to 40,000 homes delivered this year. These people buying new homes are not imaginary. The Deputy tells a story of the housing challenge, which is real. It is absolutely real. What is also real is that there are 500 first-time buyers buying their own home every single week. That is real. Surely the Deputy must meet these people as she goes around the country. She must meet these people in her constituency. I certainly meet them in mine so I do not know how the rest of the Deputies do not meet them. I meet people every single week buying their homes. They are buying homes that did not exist only a few years ago. This is because there is 128,000 additional homes that have been either added to or brought back into our national housing stock in the lifetime of this Government; 116,000 of them being new-build homes as well.

It is not just my word or my anecdote that shows there is progress in terms of people being able to access their own home. If we look at mortgage drawdowns, not commencements, not completions but the number of people drawing down a mortgage, it is true to say that the first-time buyer drawdown reached a peak of almost 26,000 last year, which was the highest annual level since 2007. When the Deputy refers to a loss of hope, I fully accept there are huge challenges when it comes to housing, not just in Ireland but right across Europe, but I also know there is very significant hope when we saw more first-time buyers last year than any year since 2007 draw down their first mortgage. These are real people and they are real facts. That matters as well.

When it comes to the issue of affordability, I am absolutely aware, and you would want to live under a rock not to be aware, of the huge challenges people face in trying to get their deposit together to buy a home. I met people as recently as Sunday on doorsteps who raised that issue with me. However, I am also aware when I engage with those people that there are a number of supports the Government has put in place that is making a very significant difference to them, whether that is the help to buy scheme, where about 50,000 people have now benefited, or the first home scheme, where we are helping to bridge the gap between what you can get as a mortgage and what you can afford in the price of a house. When we look at headline house figures, that does not tell the full story because we are intervening at a level of subsidy that is without precedent in this country. I will read the Deputy's plan. I have not yet read it but I hope she would commit, if in government, to keeping some of those schemes. If not, there are tens of thousands of people who are hoping to avail of them in the months and years ahead who will be terribly disappointed.

The figure the Taoiseach gives of 40,000 homes is disputed by the ERSI and the Central Bank. We know commencements are one thing and completions are another thing altogether. For the first six months of this year, completions are down nearly 10%. That is the reality. He mentioned the help-to-buy scheme. On this, the ESRI has stated that if this scheme was scrapped, house prices would fall. While we can all understand it can feel really supportive in that moment when house prices are so high to get that grant, it is a sad indictment of this Government that this is really the only defence it has when the ESRI has said removing it would bring down house prices.

People watching at home can see the Taoiseach is just not answering my straightforward questions. Instead, we just get deflection and spin. The facts are actually clear. Median house prices are soaring by more than €20,000 a year and listening to the Taoiseach, you would swear that was evidence of a plan that is working. Is that what he is saying to people when he meets them at the doors? The people I meet are completely fed up, exhausted and they are giving up on ever being able to buy a home in this country. This is the record of the Government and, as I said, that record will be on the ballot. At the very least, for people to think the Government would accept its policy is driving house prices might give some hope that it would be able to address it. Does the Taoiseach at least accept that the Government's approach has failed? Not introducing a vacancy tax with teeth-----

Thank you, Deputy.

-----not banning the bulk-buying of homes, not addressing these issues has not worked.

There is no balance to the Deputy's argument; this is the point. I am able to stand here and talk to the electorate on their doorsteps and point to progress and also point to the more there is to do. The Deputy just wants to dismiss any of the progress, as though those extra 128,000 homes do not exist. I am interested in what she is saying now because she has set out her stall if she is to be in the next Government.

If I am to be in the next Government, the help-to-buy scheme is absolutely staying. If the Deputy wants to get rid of it, and if she wants to tell the people who are processing their applications right now with banks across the country that she is in favour of getting rid of it, fair play, that is her position. It is not mine, and I will not go into government with anybody who does not keep it. It needs to be kept, as does the first home scheme. Both of them need to be kept because they are practical levels of subsidy. Giving people back a little bit of their money to help them save a deposit is exactly what my party and this Government intend to continue to do.

When it comes to bulk buying, Deputy Cairns talks about spin and deflection but she does not say in her piece that we have taken more action on bulk buying and stamp duty as recently as a couple of weeks ago in the budget, where we again increased the stamp duty rate. When she talks about house prices never being higher, let us not ignore the analysis from the Central Bank as recently as last month that shows house prices, relative to household disposable income, at a ratio of 4.1, compared with 5.5 in 2007. I am aware the biggest issue facing people in this country, and facing our economy and society, is housing, and that is true, but I would much rather have a debate about how we can improve the initiatives we have in place to make them work for more people and get that housing supply from 40,000 to 60,000. This idea of telling people that no progress has been made in the last number of years is not borne out by fact. Some 500 people every single week, including in the Deputy’s constituency, are buying their first home and mortgage drawdowns for first-time buyers are at the highest level ever since 2007. They are also facts.