Last Friday, we learned 15,418 people were recorded as homeless in March, another shameful new high. Nearly 5,000 children are now growing up in Ireland without a home. Each homeless child is a tragedy. There are now 22 more children homeless than there were last month. This is a national scandal. It is the civil rights issue of our generation. As legislators, we must do all we can to see this housing disaster addressed. We must build affordable and social homes, protect renters and tackle vacancy and dereliction, but the Government is not doing enough of any of this.

The Taoiseach's party, Fianna Fáil, has held the housing brief for nearly five years. For most of that period, it has simply doubled down on failed Housing for All policies. More recently, it seems, the party is diversifying. It has not launched anything like the "radical" reset the Government's Housing Commission sought and that we in the Labour Party offered. Instead, Fianna Fáil has adopted a new strategy. It is a flying-by-the-seat-of-your-pants approach to housing, with a series of solo runs, none of them based on evidence. Let us take some examples. This year alone, the Government has said it might get rid of rent pressure zones and might give tax breaks to developers. It is flying kites and no one can keep track. We are trying to figure out what the Government is planning to do on housing. Even the junior coalition partner, Fine Gael, is being kept in the dark. Earlier this month, I think we all read with interest that Fine Gael councillors from Cork as well as Deputy Colm Burke had signed a cross-party letter to the housing Minister calling for urgent funding for the tenant in situ scheme to ensure it is effective to keep renters out of homelessness. Today, Fine Gael Councillor Tom O’Leary from Fingal told the Dublin Inquirer, "I just cannot get over that they didn’t maintain the same level of funding", wondering "Why would you mess with a successful scheme that keeps people from being scattered into the wind?". He is right. The Government's changes to this scheme will render it unworkable. We are hearing from councillors around the country that evictions from the private rented sector are driving the monthly increases in homelessness. With the Government's changes to the scheme, it seems it has given up on it. Has it given up on ending homelessness altogether?

Of course, there is another new policy, shrouded in secrecy so far and announced by the Minister, Deputy Browne, who said he was going to create a new housing "maverick", a fixer-in-chief. The Taoiseach does not like the name "tsar", and nor do I, with its Russian connotations, so he is calling it the new housing activation office. However, it is another new policy that is clearly putting Fine Gael noses out of joint, as the Tánaiste has made clear. It also comes at an extraordinary and unjustifiable price tag. Maybe the Russian name is appropriate because it is a price that might be approved of by a Russian oligarch, but it is not acceptable. What exactly is the housing activation office? What will it do? Will it be underpinned by legislation? All we have been told is it will put boots on the ground and co-ordinate delivery of housing. This is meaningless and already the job of the Minister for housing, the housing Department and the Land Development Agency.

Thank you, Deputy.

This move looks like nothing more than an exercise in the evasion of accountability. What will this body actually do?

I disagree fundamentally with Deputy Bacik's analysis in terms of housing policy more generally. Fianna Fáil and the previous Government did not double down on the policy of the last number of decades. The bottom line is, in 2023, for example, we saw the highest level of delivery of new build social housing since 1975. That is not doubling down on previous policies. It represents a step change in the building of social housing, which has happened over the past three to four years. The Deputy cannot deny that. We have higher targets but you simply cannot deny the fact that 48,000 new social homes is a step change from where we were before 2020. Whatever other hyperbole the Deputy will engage in, we have to deal in facts. The only agenda I as Taoiseach and the Government have is to build as many houses as we possibly can as fast as we can; that is it. I will do everything I can to make that happen across a number of fronts.

The Deputy said we ignored the Housing Commission. We did not but the Labour Party did. The Deputy made a false statement when she said I said we might get rid of RPZs. I never once used those words. Go and check it, please, find the quotation and come back to me. I said a review of RPZ was under way. Guess who suggested there should be a review of the RPZs - the Housing Commission. I knew when the Deputy feigned interest in the Housing Commission's report that she did not really mean it because if she looks at the chapter on the rental market, it criticises the Oireachtas for its approach. It makes clear that we should explore issues with RPZs and so on - not get rid of them but explore the matter - and give certainty to private sector investment. I have said we need private sector investment in addition to public sector investment. Public sector investment this year will certainly go to €7 billion. Others estimate we will need approximately €20 billion. The State cannot do it all. We need private sector investment. Deputy Bacik's party and others have rubbished institutional funds as a vehicle for private sector investment in the housing market. It simply is not credible or sustainable to suggest that the Labour Party has a credible housing policy if it rules that out as a funding option for housing. Yet, that is what the Labour Party, the Social Democrats and others are doing and have been for the past four to five years because it is populist. It is good short-termism but it will not build a house. We need all hands on deck in housing. We need to unblock barriers on the ground. The housing activation office is not a secret; it was in the programme for Government, which was published. There was no secret about it at all.

There is so much to challenge in what the Taoiseach just said, with respect. First, he cannot stand over his Government's figures on delivery of homes when it promised 40,000 homes last year and the actual delivery was 10,000 short, a shocking shortfall. It is utterly indefensible. No one, even in the Government or in Fianna Fáil, will stand over that figure.

Second, the Taoiseach says he never said that the Government would get rid of the RPZs; I did not say he did.

You did.

I hear every day from renters in my constituency-----

Check the record.

-----who are desperately worried because of the review of RPZs announced by the Government. The reason is there are so few homes available to rent. If they cannot afford to pay their rent any longer, they have nowhere else to go. It comes back to delivery of homes. The Government is ignoring the crucial recommendation of the Housing Commission that the Government should introduce a radical reset of housing policy. We in the Labour Party called for the State take a far more active role in direct delivery-----

Thank you, Deputy.

-----of homes through the Land Development Agency, ramped up-----

Thank you, Deputy. Your time is up.

-----to provide State-built homes, as was done in the seventies, which the Taoiseach keeps referring to as the golden age of house building.

In the past three or four years, the then Government, and the Fianna Fáil Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, gave power and resources to the Land Development Agency. Its work is under way.

He promised 40,000 homes.

The Land Development Agency will get more equity and support to build more houses. That will happen but that is not the full story. We have to do much more. The bottom line is we have made a step change in the past three years. From approximately 20,000 houses built in 2019, we are now building approximately 30,000 plus. Housing for All targets were exceeded but everybody said they were not high enough.

You said they were not high enough.

Now, we need to get to 50,000, which the ESRI said. The real challenge for the Opposition and the Government is how to go from 30,000 to 50,000. We will not get there with the populist, popular soundbites I hear every week we come into Dáil Éireann. That will not build 50,000 houses. We need real solutions that can deliver. The Government will do everything it can across all aspects to get solutions. I am not interested in the short-termism-----

Thank you, Taoiseach.

-----that passes in here for housing debate all the time. I am interested in getting real solutions and getting to the 50,000 per annum we need.

Taoiseach, time is up.