Every week brings yet more news of Government failure, as the housing crisis further spirals out of the Government's control. This week, we saw daft.ie report that rents have risen by a staggering 43% since the pandemic. At the weekend, right on schedule, we were treated to the latest top-of-the-head idea from the Government. First it was tax breaks, then it was beds in sheds and, this time, the housing Minister made a rare appearance to say he wants to appoint a maverick person to kick-start delivery of homes, a sort of "fixer-in-chief". In 2021, when the Government launched Housing for All, the Taoiseach described it as forming the "basis for a long-term sustainable housing system for this and future generations". We all thought the Minister for housing would be the fixer-in-chief. Is this decision now to appoint an outsider to head up the Government's new strategic housing activation office an admission that the Government's policy has failed?

Fianna Fáil has held the housing brief for more than four years now. Those have been four years of failure, as acknowledged even by Government Departments. Department of Finance figures show that apartment planning permissions fell by one third in the first nine months of last year. The Department of public expenditure said this week that the Croí Cónaithe cities scheme was too small to ensure that apartment building could be viable. We are increasingly hearing from Fianna Fáil TDs the mantra that international finance will not invest in building apartments here unless they can get a higher rate of return. That is code for saying that renters will have to pay higher rents. That is what was so dishonest about Fianna Fáil's general election campaign on housing. Fianna Fáil misled us all on the figures for housing completions, continuously promising 40,000 new builds last year when the true figure was 10,000 less than that. Fianna Fáil did not make proposals for tax breaks for developers until after the election, and did not talk about rent increases or the growing crisis in apartment financing.

The truth is there are solutions which lie in a radical reset of housing policy, as the Housing Commission recommended. If the private sector and international capital are not engaged in financing the building of apartments, then the State must step in because only the State has the deep pockets necessary to underwrite the true level of risk and investment needed. The market has failed and ordinary workers and renters cannot bear the level of rents that speculators would want.

Apartments constitute vital strategic infrastructure, as well as vital homes for our communities. Alongside our plan to scale up the Land Development Agency, the Labour Party proposes several State-led solutions to the apartment financing crisis. Here is one. With €140 billion sitting on deposit in overnight and demand accounts in our banks, why are we not offering people a State-backed solidarity bond to finance housing? At the same time, the State is salting away €4 billion a year into the Future Ireland Fund. Will the Taoiseach consider deploying these funds, through the Housing Finance Agency, the strategic investment fund and other State funding vehicles, to deliver the homes and apartments that our communities so badly need?

The bottom line is that the State has intervened very strongly and assertively in the housing market. The State is the main player, I would argue, in the housing market right now in terms of the level of State investment. That is increasing and has increased over the last number of years. As I said yesterday, we are at record levels of social housing new builds compared with the last three decades. The Deputy can go back and compare and contrast. We need to get that figure of 8,000-plus to about 10,000 new builds and add about 2,000 more in terms of leasing to deal with homelessness cases and new acquisitions.

The Deputy keeps saying things we have not said. I never said that we wanted to increase rents or end the RPZs. I challenged her last week to produce a quote where I said I would end RPZs and of course she cannot find one because it does not exist.

I am struck by the degree to which the debate gets so easily distorted by commentary in the public sphere. It is interesting. There seems to be no space to tease out and discuss issues without the immediate assertion, allegation or branding of a comment into a nice box that fits the political slogans and so on but does not add any solutions to anything. The real debate in the election was how to get to 50,000 units per annum because every party accepted the figure of 50,000 that the Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI, says we need. The Labour Party came forward with the national housing construction agency with very little detail on it. Even when I met it subsequently in the context of Government formation, there was very little detail on it. There was no paper or document. It seemed to go back to the direct labour approach. The Labour Party seemed to envisage a national construction agency that would employ thousands of people to build homes. That is not feasible in the current era. It will not happen and it would delay the process of house building even further.

The Labour Party had further ideas around the LDA, which were unspecified. It took two years to legislate for the LDA. My argument during the election debate with Deputy Bacik was quite simply that all of that would delay and disrupt the momentum of trying to get more houses built. We need more houses to be built. We need to get the existing agencies, local authorities, approved housing bodies and the LDA working and not be formulating new schemes and agencies which, by definition, all takes time. That was the Labour Party proposition.

For example, the Deputy made comments about my statement about getting private sector investment in. It is like performance arts in here. One would imagine I had said something terrible when I said we need to get private sector investment in.

Thank you, Taoiseach. Your time is up.

I can come back.

Yes. You can come back in.

I am very disappointed by the Taoiseach's response because he did not address the substantive points I raised about the need to ensure a State-led response to the crisis in apartment financing. Instead, he engaged in dismissing Labour Party proposals. At least the previous housing Minister, Deputy O'Brien, accepted that we offered constructive opposition on housing in this House.

You used to, in the past.

We supported the LDA. We put forward proposals for transforming the LDA into a genuine vehicle for delivering homes at the scale that is needed.

What does that mean?

Fianna Fáil refused to engage with us and the Taoiseach's dismissive and increasingly tetchy attitude in this House really indicates exactly why-----

Come on.

He is increasingly tetchy, positively frothing with rage over some of the proposals we have made.

It is true. The Taoiseach may laugh, but it is increasingly-----

The tetchy Taoiseach.

It is performance politics.

A few people tried that.

It is increasingly evident.

It is called political debate.

The Taoiseach knows that in the Labour Party manifesto we put forward-----

Deputy, your time is up. I ask the Taoiseach to respond.

-----careful proposals to transform-----

Thank you, Deputy.

-----the building of homes in this country. He would not engage and he continues to dismiss our ideas.

Actually the State is involved in the apartment building area at huge cost and a genuine debate would ask whether there are better ways of doing it. I do not know what the Deputy means by turning the LDA into a genuine vehicle, as though it is not genuine now. However, when I indicated last week, as everyone outside agrees, that we need private sector investment-----

We are proposing a better idea.

Most economic people and experts in housing are saying it.

I never disagreed with that

The Deputy attacks people for mentioning it. She moves straight to tax breaks. She might benefit from looking at the history of her party on this. I quote:

We are creating this process for bringing in private investment. I hope to launch a new scheme in relation to investment in social housing in the near future, a new process for bringing in investors.

Can we guess who said that when he was Minister for housing? It was Deputy Bacik's current colleague and former party leader, Deputy Kelly-----

We have no issue with that.

-----back in the day when AK47 was firing on all cylinders.

You created the mess in the first place.

When I mentioned it last week-----

You crashed the whole country.

-----there was outrage and hyperbole.

The Taoiseach was part of the Government that crashed the country. It crashed the country and he is still spouting off.

No, this was before the 2016 election.

The Taoiseach's time is up. I call Deputy Cian O'Callaghan of the Social Democrats.

Do not get tetchy, Alan.