After months of delay, it is finally here. Almost a year into this Government, it is only now publishing its housing plan. Given the amount of time this has taken, we can be forgiven for expecting something bold and new, a plan, as the Tánaiste once said himself, to once and for all tackle the housing crisis. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Anyone who will take the time to read the plan will know the emperor has no clothes. In fact, this is not a new housing plan at all. It is nothing more than a reheating and repackaging of the failed housing plan of the last Government.

Today should have been a moment of hope for all those in need of affordable housing. Instead, it is another punch in the gut for all those without a home of their own. Once again, the Government is underestimating overall housing need and, as a result, the housing deficit will continue to grow. There is no increased funding or targets for the delivery of social homes. The result will be even longer council waiting lists and ever more adults and children experiencing homelessness. There is no increased funding or targets for the delivery of genuinely affordable homes. Instead, the Government is brazenly trying to rebrand unaffordable private homes as somehow affordable. There is also no plan to fix the Government's broken affordable housing schemes. This week, we learned so-called affordable apartments in O'Devaney Gardens in Dublin will cost €500,000. So-called affordable rental homes in the same development are expected to cost €1,900 a month. This is on land once owned by the council and gifted for free to a developer by the Tánaiste’s Government.

The Government's failure on affordable housing will mean that the locked-out generation will continue to be locked out, forced to choose between their parents’ box bedroom or emigration. The only promise the Government is keeping in this plan is its promise to attack renters. From March of next year, tens of thousands of renters will face even higher rip-off rents for the privilege of being forced to live in smaller and darker apartments. Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil’s housing policy was written by and for big investors and developers to benefit their private interests. The needs of ordinary people, workers and families have once again been ignored. For ten years, the Government has starved our councils of the resources and staff to deliver public housing on public land at scale, all the while showering investor funds, corporate landlords and big developers with subsidies and tax breaks like confetti. Today's plan does not move a single inch from that disastrous approach.

Despite what they are going to say on the radio and television, the Government’s backbenchers must be privately reeling. In fact, even the Minister for housing, Deputy James Browne, is not hanging around to defend his own plan. Instead of debating with Opposition spokespeople on television and radio this evening, he is fleeing the country to speak - believe it or not - at a housing conference in England.

It did not have to be this way. The Government could have taken on board the recommendations of its own Housing Commission or adopted the many solutions promised by Sinn Féin and others. It could have included actual, measurable targets year on year for all of its schemes, but why would it bother doing that when it knows already it is going to miss them? Instead, it has decided to do nothing different and nothing new. Given the Government's decade of failure, why should anyone believe anything is going to change now?

Today is a significant day in terms of housing policy in Ireland. It comes after a number of decisions the Government has already taken. This plan today needs to be seen in the context of the national development plan published this summer, where we significantly increased the level of investment directly in house building. After listening to people across the country, local authorities and people who build our homes, we also significantly increased the funding for the enabling infrastructure, investing more than €50 billion between water, transport and energy to enable housing supply. The plan also needs to be seen in the context of a piece of work that will conclude at the end of this month, which will speed up the delivery of infrastructure. Something we can all agree on is that we need to accelerate the delivery of infrastructure. There are too many communities in which it is taking too long to deliver vital projects. We were very clear during the election that fixing this would be a key priority for the Government.

It is also important to say that, yes, we are living through a housing emergency, and the purpose of the plan today is to make real progress and deliver 300,000 more homes during the lifetime of the plan, but it is also important for people watching at home to know there are some encouraging signs too. In the first half of this year, we saw the completion of new homes at the highest rate since 2008. We saw the number of new dwellings completed in the first three quarters of this year increase by 13% on the same period last year. These are additional new homes completed compared with the same period last year. For quarter 1 to quarter 3 of this year, we saw the highest completion figure of apartments for any time since 2011 when data started to be gathered. Something that is never said in this House from the Opposition benches is that we have seen the highest number of first-time buyers draw down their mortgage since 2007. We have seen more than 11,000 properties being approved under the vacant property refurbishment grant. The scale of challenge in relation to housing and ramping up housing supply is real and acute, but these are also real statistics that are having real benefits in the lives of people across our country.

The Deputy said today, as I expected him to say, no matter what was in the plan - I could have said it for him - that there is nothing new in the plan. Of course, that is not true. There are many new things in this plan, including a new €1 billion infrastructure investment fund to help to de-risk the development of sites in towns and cities to maximise their potential opportunities. There are measures to enable developers to deliver new stand-alone wastewater treatment plants in rural Ireland. Across my constituency and the country I have heard of parts of our country where it has not been possible to build any homes because of the inability to allow a developer to deliver a wastewater treatment plant, albeit to an Irish Water standard.

There is a new fund, which I presume the Deputy will welcome, of €400 million over the next three years for small developers. I do not think he does welcome it.

It is not new. It already exists.

That is welcome news.

It has existed since 2023.

There is also an additional €100 million, specifically in 2026, to get families out of emergency accommodation, particularly children-----

It has existed since 2023.

-----and into homes. It is new money of €100 million that has not yet been spent in 2026. Do not mislead the people. The Deputy will accept it is €100 million for 2026 that has not yet been spent. That will need to be repeated each year during the lifetime of this plan. There is a new performance fund to incentivise local authorities to exceed their annual own-build social house targets. Targets are not the ceiling. They need to go further, drive on and do more.

There is a starter home programme delivering an average of 15,000 affordable home supports per year for families, including many schemes which, quite frankly, the Deputy would scrap. Under Sinn Féin, the help to buy and first home schemes would be gone, first home owners would be abandoned, restrictions would be applied to the vacant and derelict property grant, the Land Development Agency would be abolished despite the fact it is now delivering real homes for real people across our country. Restrictions Sinn Féin would put in place would mean a garda married to a nurse in the fourth year of their jobs would not be able to access supports under Sinn Féin’s so-called affordable home scheme. We had the election and Sinn Féin’s proposals were rejected. We are getting on with the job.

The Tánaiste has been in government for more than ten years-----

I have.

-----and he has been telling us the same story over and over again. In 2016, Simon Coveney’s plan had all of the same promises, all of which were broken. In 2021, Darragh O'Brien's plan again had all of the same promises and all were broken. Today, all we are getting is more of the same. None of the things the Tánaiste has just described as new are new.

They are.

The €100 million for vacant social housing acquisitions for families who are homeless has existed every year since 2020. In fact, this year the Government cut the funding for that scheme from last year. The €400 million equity fund has been in place since 2023. Yes, it is going to be extended but it is not new. The only thing that is new is the Tánaiste refusing to tell us and the public how many new-build social, cost-rental and affordable homes the Government will deliver each year and how it will make them actually affordable. The Government failed in 2016 and 2021 and it is failing again today.

Hear, hear.

I agree there is certainly one fundamental difference between Sinn Féin and the Government when it comes to housing. Sinn Féin wants this plan to fail because it believes it will do well if our housing plan fails. We intend to work every night and day to build housing but Sinn Féin thrives on the misery-----

It has been the same story for a decade.

-----and exploiting the intergenerational anxiety of others.

The same story for a decade.

It needs this plan to fail-----

The Government is creating the intergenerational anxiety by its failure over and over again.

-----so it can exploit the challenges people face.

Of course, the Government is not going to fail because the Government has already delivered. The Deputy talks about my record in government. We delivered over 137,000 new homes during the lifetime of Housing for All.

You missed your social housing targets every year.

Deputy Ó Broin, please.

We will deliver 300,000 homes-----

You missed your affordable housing targets every year.

You will not shout me down.

Allow the Tánaiste to answer.

You will not shout me down. You will not bully me.

You cannot deliver homes at genuinely affordable prices.

You will not shout me down. Let me speak, please.

I am speaking in a very reasonable tone of voice.

No, you are shouting me down when it is my time to speak.

I am reminding you of your failures.

The people at home actually want to know what we are going to do and what we are going to do is very clear. We are going to deliver a plan that has a record level of funding, that breaks down silos, that puts a new focus on starter homes, and that sets targets for local authorities. The Deputy tells people there are no targets; that is simply untrue. The target is over 300,000 homes in the lifetime of the plan.

Where is the annual target to measure progress?

When we had an action plan on jobs, we did not set an annual target-----

Where are the annual targets?

-----but we exceeded that target, delivered jobs and got our country back to full employment.

They are not there because you know you will not meet them.

We will exceed the housing target as well.

You know you will not meet them.

Your plan was rejected-----

Deputy Ó Broin, please.

-----and you want this plan to fail so you can politically thrive.