The outrageous salary the Taoiseach proposes to pay his new housing tsar is €430,000. It is nearly half a million euro - an astonishing amount of taxpayers' money for the salary of just one person. It is more than the Taoiseach's very generous salary. It is even more than the President of the United States is paid. It is equivalent to the starting salary of 11 new nurses, 11 new gardaí or 13 new special needs assistants.

What is to be the role of this new highly paid tsar? From what we have heard, he will focus on removing roadblocks to housing construction, getting houses built more quickly and speeding up housing delivery or, in other words, the main responsibilities of the Minister for housing. That is a very expensive jobshare. It is clear the Government has no confidence in the ability of the Minister, Deputy James Browne, to do his job.

This €430,000 is a slap in the face for working people who are hit with rip-off bill after rip-off bill and who struggle to make it to the end of the week. It is a kick in the teeth for those saving every spare cent as they desperately try to put together the deposit for a house and for every young person who has been forced to leave this country because he or she cannot afford a home.

How does the Taoiseach justify this extravagant, gold-plated salary to those who are forced to fork out €2,000 on rent every months, to families who wait and wait on council waiting lists for a home or to mothers and fathers forced into homelessness, raising their children in hotel rooms or hubs? The appointment of the housing tsar changes nothing for them; that is the truth. This new, cushy job is part and parcel of the same broken Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael policies that landed us in this mess in the first place. As house prices, rents and homelessness all continue to rise, and as the Government parties miss their inadequate housing targets year after year, the Taoiseach's next move and his next big idea is to appoint another bureaucrat on an eye-watering salary. It truly beggars belief.

Hear, hear.

We have had the most expensive bike shed in the world, the €1 million security hut and the €9 million on phone pouches so people already know that the Taoiseach's Government is a serial waster of public money but this one really takes the biscuit. It has actually gone to the trouble of making up a job with a salary of €430,000 simply to give the appearance of Government action when it is doing nothing at all except going around and around in circles. It is the Government's clearest admission that it has no new idea of substance or any real plan to fix housing.

Nuair atá Fianna Fáil agus Fine Gael ag plé sár a earcú chun jab an Aire tithíochta a dhéanamh agus €430,000 a íoc leis, tá siad ag admháil go soiléir go bhfuil plean tithíochta an Rialtais ina phraiseach.

The Taoiseach deliberately misled the electorate in November, he deliberately used false housing delivery figures to take the bad look off himself - he did that brazenly - and now he is at it again. He is spinning, bluffing and taking people for fools. As he spectacularly fails, he dreams up this appointment. Can the Taoiseach confirm the new housing tsar will be paid €430,000? Can he tell us how on earth he stands over this? Can he explain to us why he is recruiting a jobshare for his housing Minister?

Hear, hear.

I could not disagree more with the Deputy on her critique of Government housing policy. The bottom line is that if we look over the past four years, there has been a very significant step change in the level and scale of housing delivery in this country. On social housing alone, more than 48,000 houses have been added to the social housing stock.

There are 15,000 homeless.

Not since the 1970s have we seen that level and scale of social house building and social house provision. Those are the facts. We need to do far more than that but, without question, the number of social houses built in the past three to four years is without compare and we would have to go back to the 1970s to get similar levels of social house completion.

It is cloud cuckoo land stuff.

In the first three years of Housing for All - 2022 to 2024 - overall housing targets were exceeded. It is not all failure and failure as Deputy McDonald dismisses it. Those were the targets set by Housing for All and they were exceeded. More than 130,000 houses were constructed.

How many new houses this year?

We need to do much, much more. The ESRI has said that the need, as a result of population growth and so on, is approximately 50,000 per annum. Sinn Féin has failed in any shape or form to provide any substance underpinning housing policy in respect of how it would achieve that target, never mind the 30,000-plus that have been achieved on an annual basis over the past three years.

There is record homelessness.

Its policies were demonstrably anti-first-time buyer and there has been quite a significant drawdown of mortgages. Up to 120,000 first-time buyer mortgages have been drawn down over the past number of years.

What happened to house prices?

If Sinn Féin had its way, it would have taken away the supports such as the help to buy scheme or indeed the first home scheme from those first-time buyers and it would have destroyed the momentum that has been built up over the past number of years-----

What momentum?

-----in respect of first-time buyers. That is the reality. Deputy Mac Lochlainn can smile all he likes but that is the truth. Sinn Féin wanted to get rid of the help to buy scheme. It wanted to get rid of the bridge the gap scheme. Will he please explain to first-time buyers how that would have assisted them? It would not have in any shape or form.

We will maintain the focus on social housing, affordable housing and on our work with the Land Development Agency. Already this year, an additional €800 million has been allocated on top of the €6 billion.

Will the Taoiseach tell us about his new man?

That includes €450 million for a further 3,000 affordable and social homes and €325 million in respect of second-hand acquisitions, incorporating the tenant in situ scheme and the provision for that. Since 2023 alone-----

Will the Taoiseach tell us about his new man?

-----over 3,300 homes have been acquired through second-hand acquisitions, as they are called, by local authorities across the country. We have published the national planning framework since coming back into office, which will facilitate the zoning of a considerably greater degree of land. I hope Sinn Féin will support that on local authorities across the country and get rid of its serial opposition to social housing that has been demonstrated time and time again.

Please, Members.

The heads of the short-term lets Bill have been brought to Cabinet-----

The Taoiseach is not answering the question.

-----and approved by Cabinet.

The Taoiseach should answer the question he was asked.

The Government decided today to establish the housing activation office. No decision has been taken as to who will head up that office but the person will be seconded from within the public service. That is an intention, which basically means there will be no additional cost in salary or whatever-----

The position will not be backfilled with someone who held a previous position then.

-----to housing - or to anybody, for that matter - in terms of a secondment-----

No backfilling.

-----within the public service. That is the objective, but no decision has been made, so I am not in a position to confirm anything to Deputy McDonald today in that respect.

"Not confirming anything" is right.

The Government built fewer houses last year than the year before, and the indications are that it will fail to meet targets again this year and build less. The evidence is there for all to see in growing costs and in the levels of homelessness. All the evidence and data are there. More importantly, the reality is lived every day, so the Taoiseach can stand up and spoof and shout at me and point his finger but he cannot alter the reality of the Government's abject failure, which, astonishingly, he is attempting to dress up as success. If that is his idea of success, God help us should we ever see something he might deem to be a failure or an underperformance.

I asked the Taoiseach three questions. I want him to confirm for us that this tsar will be paid €430,000. I do not care where he or she is seconded from. Is that the salary envisaged? I want the Taoiseach to explain how he stands over that. More importantly, why is he double-jobbing his Minister for housing? He has a full Cabinet Minister for housing.

Thank you, Deputy. Your time is up.

Why does the Taoiseach have so little confidence in him?

I call on the Taoiseach to respond.

Perhaps, in reality, he agrees with all of us-----

Thank you, Deputy McDonald. Your time is up.

-----that neither he nor any Government Member is up to the task.

I wish to confirm to the Deputy that the Central Statistics Office on Thursday - and the Deputy is good for giving her side or perspective all the time - indicated that close to 6,000 new homes were completed in the first quarter of 2025, which is the second highest first quarter delivery since the day the series began in 2011 and a 2% increase on the first quarter of 2024. It is a figure that the Deputy did not in any shape or form refer to.

But I did refer to the €430,000.

That is not surprising because she did not in any shape or form want to point to any figures that would give some degree of positive reality. We want to build far more and we acknowledge that we have far more to build. The Deputy has a record of opposing well over 1,000 houses in her own constituency.

What about the €430,000?

What about the €430,000?

She has put her own constituency needs above and beyond the housing-----

She did. She objected to well over 1,000 houses in her constituency.

This is Taoiseach's questions.

It is a bit rich of her to come in here on a daily basis ranting about housing when her own record in respect of giving it the ultimate priority that it deserves is fairly poor in terms of her performance.

Why does the Taoiseach have no confidence in his Minister?

What about confidence in the Minister?

The programme for Government-----

Thank you, Taoiseach. Your time is up.

-----is clear in its decision. The programme ordained that we would set up a housing activation office because we are going to consistently add to the initiatives we have taken in housing-----

Thank you, Taoiseach. Your time is up.

Where is the Minister?

Is he not up to the job?

-----and we make no apologies for doing further in terms of-----

I call on Deputy Ivana Bacik of the Labour Party.