I give a warm welcome to the Little Blue Heroes who are with us in Leinster House today or watching online. I commend the gardaí involved in the organisation. I hope they have a pleasant day with us.

This week, primary school children across the country will be released from school for their summer holidays. They will wave goodbye to teachers, SNAs and classrooms and put away their schoolbags and books until after the holidays but some children will have very little to look forward to this summer. The latest statistics on homelessness will be released on Friday. As it stands, in Ireland today, 4,775 children are recorded as homeless. This figure is likely to go up on Friday, as it has done consistently since a Fianna Fáil Minister lifted the eviction ban in 2023. Those children in homelessness face a very different prospect than their peers this summer. They do not have forever homes. Some entire families are sharing one room in a homeless hub, hotel or hostel. Their children have no room to play or grow. Their parents face an awful situation, often forced to make really difficult choices.

Yesterday, I visited a dog shelter. There, I heard from staff who told me about the anguish faced by families forced to give up beloved family pets because they are entering homelessness. I met one family dog and a litter of little puppies. Her owners were desperate to keep her but could not because they had received notice to quit. Dublin City Council anticipates that the cost of housing people in emergency accommodation will increase by €35 million this year. Spending has more than trebled in the past decade, which is demand driven. Spending on emergency accommodation is increasing because more people and, shamefully, more children are being left without a home. They have been failed by the State. They have been failed by this Government. The cost of that failure is more than just monetary. I think we are all aware of the immense human cost of families forced to give up pets, move into one room and of children whose lives are curtailed in this way. The consequences of allowing children to be left without a home are disastrous for the individual families and households and for our entire social order. The Government is not offering any prospect of hope to families facing notices to quit. Its policies are tolerating the intolerable. Notices of termination are the biggest driver of homelessness in Dublin, representing 32% of all those presenting as homeless in 2023 and 42% in 2024, a 10% increase in one year. The Government is offering nothing to families in this scenario. We in the Labour Party offered a homeless families Bill which would oblige authorities to prioritise the needs of children as members of families, not just treat them as dependents of homeless adults.

Eight years ago.

There is a consensus across housing charities that this would make a difference to families. For years, successive housing Ministers have delayed on this Bill.

Taoiseach to respond, please.

When will the Government start treating child homelessness like the emergency it is?

I thank the Deputy for raising this very important issue. I take issue with the term "released" from school. Children these days enjoy school and have very good experiences in our schools but they are going out to enjoy the summer holidays. Through many other avenues of government, we will endeavour to give supports to children throughout the summer holidays. More specifically, the issue of homelessness is key. A key strategy is to shorten the time any family experiences emergency accommodation and ensure they can receive social housing. We have built more social houses in the past four years than in the previous 40 years. The increase in building of social housing and the provision of social housing through other mechanisms has increased exponentially. That is a key way of dealing with homelessness. The housing first programme is also key. It was recommended strongly a number of years ago by the homeless agencies.

There are now 1,000 tenancies for homeless people with complex health and social needs, with further significant numbers planned for 2025 and that is a very important intervention. We have no issue with examining the Labour Party's legislation, although is the Deputy suggesting those who are perhaps on the list for eight or nine years? A balance always has to be struck between those on the homeless list vis-à-vis those who have been on the social housing list for quite considerable lengths of time and have an entitlement as a social house as well. What will be key is increasing the number of social houses we build and doing it consistently over the next decade and more. The building of social houses has already had an impact on the social housing lists in many cities and local authority areas and also on the issue of homelessness itself by reducing the length of time people experience in emergency accommodation.

An eviction ban would actually be regressive in terms of supply. Ultimately we need more supply of homes and housing. The Housing Commission made it clear the Oireachtas's approach to the rental market over the past four years was too interventionist. That is what it more or less said. I am sorry; "reactive" might be the word the commission used. The result was a dampening of supply into the market, thereby exacerbating the situation. We cannot endorse policies that would make the supply situation much worse and by definition make the homelessness issue much worse. That needs to be acknowledged also.

First, I should reassure the Taoiseach and any school staff watching that of course I was using the word "released" in a somewhat tongue-in-cheek fashion. Our schools are generally very happy places, children are generally very happy to receive an education and we have excellent school staff across the country.

On a more serious note, what I am hearing from the Taoiseach and his Government is nothing that offers any reassurance to families who wish to be released from homelessness. That is the sad reality. The Taoiseach's Government is offering no hope to people. The Labour Party put forward the homeless families Bill eight years ago. In the meantime, the number of children in homelessness has almost doubled and there is no sense of urgency or ambition from the Government. Maybe the Taoiseach should look back at his party's past. In the 1960s Fianna Fáil ensured State intervention directly in the delivery of homes through the National Building Agency under Seán Lemass. There were lots of issues with that, but certainly there was no difficulty with having a State-led focus on delivery of homes, and that is what we in the Labour Party have called for. Let the State, through local authorities-----

The Taoiseach to respond.

-----and the LDA and a State-----

Thank you, Deputy Bacik.

-----construction company deliver homes again at the scale children in homelessness so desperately need.

Over the last five years since Fianna Fáil came back into government we have built close to 48,000 social houses - delivered. That is the most in 40 years. You would have to go back to the 1970s to get that level of social housing construction, but we need more because the population has increased. That is a factor in this. The composition of those presenting for homelessness and emergency accommodation has also changed. It is much more complex than perhaps the immediate understanding of the term or the experience of homelessness today. There is a European context to it which is very real now and there is a blurring of a lot of distinctions as well in terms of entitlements and so forth, so we have to be very clear-eyed about that. We are treating this as an emergency and as urgent and we are doing everything we can through local authorities-----

Thank you, Taoiseach. The time is up.

-----and through the approved housing bodies and those involved in the homelessness area to address this issue.