Let us not play politics.

The fate of hundreds of thousands of young people, workers, families and those with a disability relies on what the Government will publish in its new plan for housing tomorrow. It is not a dramatic statement to say that young people are leaving our shores, workers with good jobs and decent incomes have zero hope of being able to buy, workers of all ages are condemned to a rental market with exorbitant rents, and thousands of families are facing a very uncertain winter and new year because of the Government's heartless changes to rent protections earlier this year.

For too many, our country has become one of luck, when you were born, if you have a partner and if your parents were able to help you with a deposit to be able to access a secure, safe and affordable home. Tomorrow, I have no doubt the Government will try to dazzle the public with announcements of new schemes, funds and extra billions of euro. However, it is not a case of what you spend but how you spend it. The Government has spent enormous amounts of money on the purchase of turn-key apartments that were originally designed to be sold on the open market. Not only is this a massive transfer to developers, but it also squeezes out home buyers desperate to purchase a home.

Last year, councils and approved housing bodies, AHBs, directly built a paltry 335 new social homes, yet the public sector spent over €2 billion purchasing over 4,700 new units.

It spent an average of €431,000 per unit, which is a whopping 24% increase on the previous year. Somebody somewhere is laughing, and it is not ordinary people out there, desperately looking for a home. The Department of public expenditure and reform admitted in 2023 that turnkey acquisitions were 21% more expensive than a direct build. Yet, Government reliance on private developers to bail it out of the social and affordable housing crisis has gone up, not down.

In budget 2026 the Government spent €270 million in tax cuts to developers in its latest wing-and-a-prayer attempt to get apartments built. These are all massive transfers to developers. It makes a complete laughing stock of any claim to be value for money and, devastatingly, it squeezes the existing availability of homes for purchase that should be within workers' reach. All the while, the Land Development Agency, the State agency set up to get houses built, is moving at a snail's pace, with just 281 directly-built homes to the end of last year.

My question to the Taoiseach regarding the Government's housing plan is: will it reverse course and prioritise direct building on the lands the State owns? Will the Taoiseach ensure that, for the over 4,700 people who are facing notice of termination coming into the winter, the Government will put in place an eviction ban? We know from the Daft report today that the number of rental properties is at an all-time low and people have nowhere to go. Will the Taoiseach ensure that with regard to construction labour supply, particularly apprentices, the Government makes good on the promise to pay them the national minimum wage as promised by the Tánaiste three years ago?

First of all, I fundamentally disagree with the positioning of the Deputy in respect of the housing issue, which is the number one priority facing our country, particularly young people. Progress was made under Housing for All and the targets outlined in it were achieved, despite commentary to the contrary. Over 137,000 houses have been built since Housing for All was published, with €14 billion in terms of capital Exchequer funding allocated. Some 59,000 households have purchased their first home through the help to buy scheme. That is people out there in the private market. Another 8,400 have done so through the first home scheme, which I understand the Deputy opposed. These are real people out there who were able to buy their home because of access to the help to buy scheme and the first home scheme. The percentage of drawdown of first-time mortgages has risen significantly, to about 35%, from about 23% in 2015. There has been real activity in terms of enabling people to purchase homes but it simply is not enough and we have a lot more to do. There is no question about that.

We need to get from 33,000 to 35,000 homes to 50,000 to 60,000 homes per annum. That is the bottom line. We need both the public sector and the private sector. We also need unprecedented investment in infrastructure. If you look at what we have allocated through the public capital investment programme and the off-balance sheet procurement of finance by the State agencies on the energy side, you are looking at an investment of about €54 billion in transport, energy and water. All of that investment will enable more housing. A very structured, fundamental and strategic approach has been adopted by the Government. An unprecedented amount of public money is going into housing in terms of the unprecedented amount of money going into the infrastructure that will enable more housing. We also want to bring on board significant activity from the private sector to complement the work of the public sector. All of those strands are required to deal with the housing crisis.

An eviction ban will not deal with the housing crisis. Measures the Deputy has advocated in the past would seek to undermine any potential of any private sector investment coming into the market and we need private sector investment. It is estimated by the Department of Finance that we need about €20 billion per year to meet the required number of houses. The State on its own cannot provide that €20 billion. We need additionality to the public sector spend from the private sector as well.

I know the Deputy disagrees with that but I see no proposals from her that would in any way reach the €20 billion to enable us to get to 60,000 houses per annum.

What I am hearing from the Taoiseach is that Housing for All was a success, yet we have over 16,000 people registered as homeless. By any measure, the Government's housing policies have been an abject failure. There are unprecedented amounts going into housing, but where are they going? They are going to developers on foot of the policy of this Government in respect of turnkey acquisitions as opposed to building directly.

In the context of ideas, we have said many things with regard to housing. We have talked about expanding the Land Development Agency's powers in order that it would not have to go agency by agency but could instead use compulsory purchase orders on a bigger scale. We have also talked about the construction labour supply. We never hear any answers from the Government about how to expand construction labour supply. We have talked about a State construction company and about apprenticeships. I have heard nothing from the Government in that regard. Instead, all too often, the Government throws its hands in the air and says we cannot get the workers. We have brought forward proposals-----

I have never said that.

-----with regard to workers and how to secure apprentices and bring them into the system. The Government has failed in that regard.

We have over 190,000 workers in the construction sector. That is up by about 45,000 since 2019, so there has been huge work done in terms of the human resources requirement for house construction. I was on a housing site last week in Ballyvolane in Cork. They are now building the houses within a nine-week timeframe because of the infrastructure work that went in there about two years ago. Up to 800 houses will be delivered on that site, through timber frame and modern methods of construction, utilising the Enterprise Ireland framework and programme.

There is huge progress being made, but it is not enough. The population has grown exponentially. We acknowledge that. We need to remove barriers and bottlenecks to infrastructural development, which we will do. We need the support of those opposite in that regard. What happens when we want to amend Department guidelines? Those opposite seek judicial reviews.

Yes.

We need houses of different types and size and different approaches to solve this issue.

Thank you, Taoiseach.

Everywhere you go, the Opposition opposes almost all of the measures.

Absolutely not.

What Deputy Sherlock offered there is of no real substance-----

That is not true. It is factually incorrect.

Thank you, Taoiseach. That is it. The time is up.

-----in terms of talking about a new agency. The LDA will now have €8.5 billion for direct build.