Is náireach plean an Rialtais beagnach €500,000 a íoc leis an sár tithíochta nua chun post a roinnt leis an Aire tithíochta. Tá an pobal iontach feargach mar gheall ar seo, agus ní cóir go rachaidh sé ar aghaidh. Ní féidir le duine ar bith an seasamh seo a chosaint agus ní cóir go n-éireodh leis.

A sum of €430,000 is the off-the-wall salary that the Tánaiste's Government is planning to pay the new housing tsar to come in and basically jobshare with the housing Minister, Deputy James Browne. A few words have been written and used to describe this decision. They include "absurd", "extravagant" and "scandalous". I will add another: "embarrassing". The Government should be embarrassed that it was prepared to pay someone nearly half a million euro to take up what are the main responsibilities of the Minister for housing. The Minister himself said that this housing tsar will come up with "rapid responses from all angles and unblocking delivery via a targeted team of experts." Does he not realise that that is his job that he is describing? That is his actual job. It is farcical.

The Taoiseach lectured the Opposition that this whopping €430,000 will not cost the public any additional money. He said this is because the Government's preferred candidate, Brendan McDonagh, is already receiving the salary as the head of NAMA. The Taoiseach's claim that the public will not cough up for this gold-plated salary appears not to be true, because this morning it has come to light that following the winding-down of NAMA, which is happening this year, McDonagh is due to return to his role in the NTMA at a significantly reduced salary so the taxpayer will foot the bill for this madcap salary. Is that not the truth?

There has been much speculation as well that Fine Gael is not happy. The media has been briefed about rows at Cabinet. Fine Gael backbenchers are apparently up in arms. Apparently the Tánaiste himself was blindsided by this bonkers decision and the process that was involved. He should come off the stage. There is no blindsiding going on here. This appointment and the name of Brendan McDonagh has been flagged in the national media with him as the lead candidate for nearly two months. Either the Tánaiste was very much on board or he was asleep at the wheel. Which one was it? Was he just oblivious to everything that has been written and said for the past six weeks or is this just an attempt by Fine Gael to dress this up as a Fianna Fáil solo run and a PR job because he recognises there is a public backlash about this? Ordinary people are shaking their heads and are sick to their stomachs in disbelief. This is happening at a time when so many are finding it difficult to make ends meet, hit by rip-off bill after rip-off bill and at a time when our working people and young people are struggling to find a home and to keep a roof over their heads. It is a real slap in the face for them.

It is not lost on anybody that this is happening on International Workers' Day, when the Government is breaking its election promises about increasing the minimum wage to the living wage and rowing back on its pledge to increase the number of paid sick days for workers. I know the Cabinet committee on housing is meeting today about this embarrassing idea to have a jobshare for the housing Minister. Will the Tánaiste come to his senses? Will he call stop on this absurd idea to pay someone hundreds of thousands of euro to do the job of the housing Minister, which he is already well-paid for? If this idea goes ahead and if the Tánaiste thinks he has seen a backlash now, he should get ready because he has not seen anything yet.

I thank the Deputy for raising this important issue. We all agree that housing is the most important issue. There is a housing emergency in this country. There is an onus on all of us to come forward with ideas and policies to try to make real and meaningful progress for people in the country. I hope we are at least united on this.

This Government has taken a number of steps on housing since coming to office only months ago, including publishing an implementation plan for the Planning and Development Act 2024, publishing draft legislation about short-term letting and the regulation of that sector, bringing forward proposals regarding exempted development and making it easier for people who want to construct developments, particularly on their own land and in their own gardens, and indeed having a new housing plan by the summer recess. The Cabinet committee on housing will meet about that issue today. We have also published the new national planning framework, which was before this House this week and indeed the other House. It is key to ensuring that we have enough zoned land across our country to build homes.

We all know that when it comes to the building of homes for our people and getting people out of box rooms, one of the key barriers that people find with regard to construction is silos, where there is a site but there might not be a water connection or a wastewater connection, there might be an ESB challenge or there might be another blockage. When the previous Government set up the Housing Commission, it recognised this issue and called for structures to be put in place. It talked about a housing delivery oversight executive office to bring in expertise and people from different utility companies to ask how we are going to unblock a site and build more quickly. The Deputy is in favour of that idea, which is why I am surprised at his opposition to the idea of setting up this office. Page 98 of the Sinn Féin housing plan does not talk about jobshares or anything else but about setting up a housing delivery oversight executive to bring forward exactly what we now want to do too. Sinn Féín talks about bringing it forward on a statutory basis, ultimately, which I am happy to talk to Deputy Doherty about, but it talks about setting it up in the first instance-----

No housing tsar. Where is the housing tsar? Read it out.

There is no housing tsar for us either.

I love the way Sinn Féin loves to laugh and joke about the issue of housing. It proposed in the general election that if it was elected to government, and thank God we were spared that, it would establish a new office to bring forward all of the different structures to break down silos. That is what Sinn Féin proposed. The Housing Commission proposed that, and so did the Government. When we got together after the election and formed our programme for Government, we said we would take on board what seemed like a sensible idea, to second people, bring in expertise, and try to get homebuilding accelerated. That is a good idea. On Tuesday at Cabinet, we agreed to establish that office, something very similar to what Sinn Féin wanted on page 98.

Sinn Féin policy-----

That is the only decision that we have made. We have not made any decisions about personnel or pay. Process matters with all of these issues. We will continue to engage as a Government, now that we have made the decision on establishing the new office, on how best to staff that office. The overriding objective will not be personality but will be getting the job done and making sure that people who live in box rooms in their mums' and dads' homes can move out and into their own home. We are taking on board the good suggestions from the Housing Commission. Heaven forbid, we might even be taking on a reasonably good suggestion from Sinn Féin about trying to establish a unit just like this. I am quite surprised that Sinn Féin seems to be so against it today.

Who is the Tánaiste trying to fool? He just stood up and barefaced said there is no housing tsar in his plan. Is that what he is trying to say? Does he know what his housing Minister said on "RTÉ News at One" yesterday? He said that Brendan McDonagh is "our preferred candidate". The Tánaiste said there are no candidates. The idea that there have not been conversations with Brendan McDonagh is nonsense, as is the idea that the Tánaiste did not know. Did the Tánaiste not read the Business Post six weeks ago when Brendan McDonagh's name was mentioned? What about Jack Horgan-Jones' piece about a month ago? The idea that the Tánaiste is blindsided by this is nonsense. The Government is proposing a housing tsar with a salary of €430,000. That is what is on the cards here. Deputy James Lawless, a Minister at the Cabinet, was talking in Kildare this morning and said that it is a big salary. This is understood, yet the Tánaiste is trying to backtrack after a public backlash about this.

A housing tsar is a daft idea because the housing Minister should be doing that job in the first instance. What salary is the Tánaiste willing to accept to pay this housing tsar? What salary does he believe is appropriate? Is it €300,000, €350,000, €400,000, or €430,000? Will he please give clarity to the people about his thinking on this? Or will he just wait to see what way the wind blows, go with it and then pretend he was never on board in the first instance?

Hear, hear.

I am very on board with setting up a housing activation office and I thought Deputy Doherty was too. It is in page 98 of Sinn Féin's own plan, about breaking down the silos, bringing in expertise, and-----

Answer the question.

I am not sure whether its Deputies read the policies but that is what they all ran on in the election.

They ran in the election and said that he wanted to establish an office to bring together people to break down silos relating to housing.

Of course.

That is what we are doing. It was not Sinn Féín's idea or ours; it was a good idea that came from the Housing Commission and we are trying to act on that. The Minister was quite right this week to bring forward a proposal to Cabinet to move that forward. The only decision the Government of Ireland took this week was in that regard.

How much is the Tánaiste willing to pay?

Now that the Government of Ireland has done that, we will decide how best to populate the office, process matters - I want to understand the processes followed regarding key personnel - and we will then address all those matters and put this together.

How much is the Tánaiste willing to pay for the jobshare?

That is the appropriate way. Of course, people who do a job will be paid a salary but this not about personalities.

The Tánaiste has no idea, just like on housing. He has no idea.

Please, Deputy Doherty.

In the first instance, this is about getting things right. Speculation in the media is not how we do things in government. We will bring forward proposals, we will tease them through-----

The Minister put it out on the media and announced it.

-----and we will consider them. That is exactly what we will do in the hours and days ahead and we will get this right-----

How much is the Tánaiste willing to pay for the jobshare?

-----with a housing activation office to break down silos. Getting the right people in place is also important.

How much is the Tánaiste willing to pay?