I do not want this plan to fail. The future of our country, particularly for people my age, depends on it. At last this morning, we have a new housing plan but I have never seen any government take so long to come up with so little. This time last year, the Government deliberately misled the electorate in terms of the housing targets. During the election, the Government never publicised its plans to hike rents, change the rental rules and shrink apartment sizes. This new plan tells us that the Government will deliver 300,000 homes by 2030 but it will need a minor miracle to deliver that. The Government has abandoned targets for the private sector and it is very clear that it has done this to shield itself from accountability because what one cannot count, one cannot measure.

The overall targets for this plan are wrong. They are too low and do not consider inbuilt demand due to the housing deficit. The previous target for over 40,000 homes this year was a fiction so how is anyone expected to believe the Government will deliver 300,000 homes by 2030? The Central Bank projections are clear that only 36,000 homes will be delivered in 2026 and 40,000 in 2027. That leaves 200,000 homes to be built in the second half of this plan. That is a doubling of current delivery, with no sense that the private sector can or will do it. Construction activity is falling month on month. Developers are on the go-slow because they know they have the Government on the hook. The target of 12,000 social units is only a 20% increase on current targets when what is needed is closer to 15,000, as we proposed in our manifesto and as the Housing Commission, which the Government continues to ignore, stated.

In the section on promoting affordable ownership, there are no new measures, bar prize bonds, to make ownership a reality for people my age. In fact, the Government talks about new schemes but what it has done is mainly just a PR exercise of repackaging existing supports or renaming them. The Government's previous plan for affordable homes never delivered on its targets and its solution is to effectively put all of the supports together and rename them. There is nothing in this plan to show how the Government will build the tens of thousands of extra affordable homes we need or how house prices will come down, which they need to do.

We are told the LDA will have an expanded role but only €2.5 billion of additional funding is being provided and there is no clarity around what specific powers the agency will have. What is needed is a massive ramping up of State capacity to directly build social and affordable homes.

I have several questions. Why has the Government abandoned its annual targets? What is the Government's measure of success for this plan in year one? Will homelessness fall? What new specific measures are in this plan to make home ownership affordable again? What does the Government say to any young person, to people my age? Is it, as the Minister said, that they just have to hang in there and for what? Will it be for another 15 or 20 years?

First, I want to extend my deepest sympathy to Deputy Sheehan's colleague Deputy George Lawlor on the passing of his mum, Betty. I understand he delivered a very heart-warming tribute to her yesterday and I join Members across the House in extending my sympathy to him and all of his family at this difficult time.

I thank Deputy Sheehan for raising these issues. I accept that he does not want the plan to fail. I also accept that generally our engagements in relation to housing are constructive. We have different perspectives and different views on occasion but I appreciate that point.

I have to reject or disagree with a number of the assertions the Deputy has made. Yes, the State needs to do more in terms of direct building but there is no way the State is going to build all of the homes that our country requires. I think the Deputy and I can agree on that. There is a target of delivering 300,000 more homes over the lifetime of the plan. Roughly speaking, from memory, around 162,000 of those homes will either be social homes, local authority homes or will be homes that are part-funded through a variety of Government schemes. That is a very significant proportion. In fact, I would argue that this country is investing more Exchequer funding relative to the market than many, if not most, other European countries. Even doing that, I think the Deputy and I will also agree that we are still going to need the private sector to build more homes as well. That is where we are going to get the bulk of delivery. To do that we have to open up sites and listen to those who build homes and the local authorities in terms of the feedback they are getting as well. That is why I reject the assertion that there is nothing in this plan that is going to make a material difference. We are investing hugely in the enabling infrastructure around water and wastewater. We are enabling small developers on small sites to put in their own infrastructure which will help rural and regional communities right across the country.

In relation to the targets, just to be clear on this, the target is very clear. It is 300,000 more homes over the lifetime of the plan. When we were in government with Deputy Sheehan's party, we had a target for the action plan on jobs of 100,000 new jobs. We did not break it down every year, and the Labour Party did not look for that either, but we exceeded the target. We have got to be clear here. I do not accept this idea of arbitrary deadlines, whether something is finished on 31 December or 1 January, or the idea that somebody can sit back and say they have done their bit for this county for this year and will wait until next year. We need a constant pipeline over the lifetime of this plan and we need people hungry to do more. That is why, as the Minister of State, Deputy Cummins, and the Minister, Deputy Browne, have made clear, we are putting a fund in place to reward and incentivise local authorities that go above and beyond their so-called target in terms of either social or starter homes.

In relation to children, and child homelessness in particular, we are taking two very significant steps. One is the fund to help get families out of homelessness, with €100 million next year to be ring-fenced. I am being clear that this is going to need to be repeated each year. That needs to really ramp up, to resource and fund our local authorities in a ring-fenced way to help to get children out of homelessness and get a roof over their heads. The second step - and I have heard Focus Ireland and others seek this - is changes to the social housing allocation scheme to prioritise homeless children. That is also in the plan.

In his reply, the Tánaiste did not address any of the specific questions I asked. The fact of the matter is that there are elements in this plan that I welcome. Some of those elements are things that we already proposed, such as amending the law to ensure the best interests of children are taken into account by local authorities when families become homeless. Former Deputy Jan O'Sullivan had that in a Bill in 2017.

The fact is that the State is not doing enough in terms of directly building social and affordable housing. Most of the homes that the LDA delivered in recent years were turnkey units. The State is investing significant sums in housing but a lot of it is going into inflationary schemes. When I talk to local authorities, they do not want financial incentives. They want the Department to engage with them properly and work with them constructively, not to stand in their way. They are very keen to get on with the job of building the homes we need.

Some of them are, and some are better than others. I do not think it is uniform across the country. I have got to be very honest. I have a league table that the Minister for housing has published, which shows some local authorities well exceeding their council targets for social housing, including the county of Wicklow that I represent, and others making a paltry contribution. When national targets are missed, they are not missed at a national level. They are missed by local authorities. I do not believe that every local authority is doing everything possible. I do not believe there is a consistent approach, whereby every hospital equally performs and every council equally performs. That is why we should incentivise good behaviour, good practice, good policy and political courage to do more and deliver more in communities.

I do not agree with the assertion around the Land Development Agency. I have just come from Donore, a site here in Dublin city, where we are delivering with the LDA, in partnership with Dublin City Council, one-, two- and three-bedroom units. I would ask the Labour Party to reflect on this. We are trying to make changes to apartment standards so we can have flexibility to deliver more accommodation and one of its elected representatives-----

To make them smaller and darker-----

-----is going to court. One of its elected representatives has rushed to the courts to try to block those changes to apartment standards.

Fine Gael's lord mayor is not in favour of it.

I ask Deputy Sheehan respectfully, as his party's spokesperson on housing-----

Your own lord mayor is not in favour of it.

-----to pick up the phone to his councillor and tell him to stop weaponising the use of the courts to try to delay changes we need to make to apartment standards.

There will be students in Limerick who need more apartments and student accommodation to be built and the Labour Party councillor is actively delaying that in my respectful opinion.

That is completely disingenuous.

It is not. It is true.