"Housing delivery is the number one priority for this Government." That is the opening line of the statement issued by the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste following the first meeting of the Cabinet committee on housing. From this meeting, they had promised a slate of new and dynamic ideas, they said, to tackle the housing crisis, but that has not materialised. In fact, they have brought nothing new at all. The truth is that the Government's housing plan is in freefall after its figure of 40,000 new homes for 2024 was discovered to be a work of fiction. Now the Government has this scattered, frantic, directionless approach where it is talking about everything but dealing with nothing.

Just to remind the Taoiseach, we still have sky-high house prices - the CSO tells us €200,000 more expensive now than a decade ago. We still have rip-off rents and shocking levels of homelessness, and today a report reveals the extent to which international students are being pressurised for sex in return for rent-free housing, surely a new low. The Government proposes to end the rent pressure zones and proposes to reintroduce tax breaks for developers but it gives nothing on how the Government will deliver homes that working people can actually afford to buy or rent. After all the high-level meetings, its big centrepiece idea, it seems, is to relax planning rules to allow people to build cabins in the bottom of their gardens. Now, greater flexibility is needed in this, and we will work with the Minister to get the regulations in place. However, to cast this up as the solution to the housing crisis simply highlights just how broken and how failed the Government's response to the housing crisis is. Tinkering around at the edges does not cut it. We need a serious change of direction in housing policy, one in which the housing needs of ordinary people are prioritised and where affordability is tackled head-on.

In O'Devaney Gardens, now called Montpelier, here in Dublin, the largest Government so-called affordable housing scheme in the State, we read this morning that a two-bedroom apartment in the development can cost anything up to €402,000. That is not affordable. It is certainly not the cost we should be getting from a Government-subsidised housing scheme. This was, remember, public land on which the State should have and could have developed genuinely affordable homes, but instead the Government forced Dublin City Council to hand it over to a private developer and now we have these prices that are out of reach for the vast majority of working people.

The Taoiseach has stated that "everything is on the table" when it comes to housing, but in reality this is code for not having a clue what to do next. His so-called new Government has no new ideas and no coherent plan. Tá plean tithíochta an Rialtais ina phraiseach; mar sin, tá an cur chuige trína chéile. Níl tuairim ná freagra nua ar bith ag an Rialtas seo atá in ainm is a bheith nua, mar dhea. This Government is all over the place on housing. The big question now is when it will get its act together. When will it bring forward new ideas and solutions to this crisis?

Is léir ó 2020 amach go bhfuil dul chun cinn le feiscint ó thaobh cúrsaí tithíochta. Tá an-chuid déanta againn ach is léir maraon leis sin nach bhfuil dóthain déanta againn agus go bhfuil i bhfad níos mó le déanamh sna míonna agus na blianta atá romhainn. An tuairim atá agam féin ná go bhfuil an polasaí atá ag an Rialtas seo i bhfad níos fearr agus go mbeidh sé i bhfad níos éifeachtaí ná na polasaithe atá foilsithe ag Sinn Féin. Níl aon amhras orm faoi sin. Since 2020 onwards, there has been progress on housing. We went from 20,000 a year to over 30,000 a year. We exceeded the targets that were set in Housing for All, which were realistic targets taking variable factors into account. Given, however, the rise in the Irish population and the growth of our country, it is not enough, and I acknowledge that.

Housing is the number one issue facing us. The last Government introduced a range of schemes. This Government, only a number of weeks in office, has announced a further €450 million in additional funding for social, affordable and cost-rental homes. We are setting up a new strategic housing initiative office, as recommended by the Housing Commission. We are publishing the national planning framework to allow us to zone much more land and to enable the county councils and the city councils to zone additional land for more houses to be built. We are hitting the ground running as regards the housing agenda.

I will contrast that with Sinn Féin's position. I acknowledge all the challenges and the pricing and so on, but the bottom line is that our schemes have helped an enormous number of first-time buyers. The help-to-buy scheme has seen about 51,000 approvals. Sinn Féin opposed it and proposed to abolish it. As regards the first home scheme, likewise, over 3,000 homes have been bought by young couples or young individuals using that scheme. Sinn Féin proposed to abolish that. That is, I believe, why the people were not persuaded by its housing policy platform. Then it had a convoluted idea under affordable housing that people could buy the house but could not buy the land on which the house was built, and a Sinn Féin government would dictate how they would sell the house subsequently, which appealed to nobody out there in respect of young people looking to buy a house for the future.

Not true. At least they could afford the houses, unlike under the Government's policy.

Those are the facts, and people made decisions based on that.

Based on the figure of 40,000.

That does not get away, however, from the need to get to 50,000 houses per annum, as the ESRI indicates are required, given our population growth. The focus has to be on initiatives that make that happen. Deputy McDonald mentioned O'Devaney Gardens. I accept that those prices are high, but they are being heavily subsidised as it is by the State, so the Deputy cannot have it both ways.

But we told you this was going to happen. You ignored our advice.

The entire intervention in housing at the moment-----

We told you how to do it properly and you ignored our advice.

This is now repeatedly happening, a Cheann Comhairle - repeated heckling and interventions by Sinn Féin-----

I am just reminding you, Taoiseach. We gave you an alternative and you ignored it.

Taoiseach, finish. You have 30 seconds left.

-----every time I speak on Leaders' Questions. Those sorts of intimidatory tactics and attempts to disrupt must be stopped.

Taoiseach, I will handle that. You have 30 seconds left.

Well, I am just making a point-----

As am I.

-----and I am not going to take it without making the point. Deputy Ó Broin seems to be aspiring to be the leader of Sinn Féin or something. I do not know-----

Absolutely not. I am happy where I am, Taoiseach.

-----but he is constantly interrupting on these matters.

As regards other initiatives we will take-----

Thank you, Taoiseach. Your time is up.

-----we outlined those yesterday in the aftermath of the Cabinet subcommittee-----

Thank you, Taoiseach. Your time is up now.

-----on housing, which we held on Monday.