On behalf of the Social Democrats, I extend sympathies to Deputy Lawlor.

Fine Gael has been in government for nearly 15 years. That is 15 years of promises, plans and press conferences with Ministers donning hard hats, 15 years spent turning the housing crisis into a housing disaster. Under the Tánaiste's watch, house prices have almost doubled, skyrocketing rents have more than doubled and the number of people who are homeless has increased by more than 400%.

This morning Fine Gael's fourth housing plan was launched. This time, we are told, it will be different. How can it be? The plan contains the same recipe for failure. There is no sign of the radical policy changes called for by the Housing Commission. Worse, there is no hope for the locked out generation that anything will get any better.

The housing crisis is a daily struggle etched into the lives of tens of thousands of people. Generations of families are crammed into overcrowded houses. Entire families are living in box rooms. Toddlers are growing up in homeless accommodation without the physical space to learn how to crawl. Adults are stuck in their childhood bedrooms, putting their lives on hold year after year. The mental toll this is taking is immense. Stress, anxiety and hopelessness are becoming the norm for people who are stuck in this housing limbo. People's lives are being ruined.

In the run-up to the last election, Fine Gael promised that 40,000 homes would be built last year. This has been exposed as a complete and utter fabrication. What is the Government's response? It has scrapped annual targets from its housing plan. All of a sudden, it thinks they are a bad idea. I have news for the Tánaiste. The latest desperate attempt to disguise the Government's terrible record in housing will not work. No sleight of hand can hide the mess Fine Gael Governments have made. That annual targets have disappeared from this plan is damning. If the Government had any confidence in its plan, or in its housing Minister, that would not have happened. The housing Minister who has delayed the launch of this plan for almost a year will not even hang around to debate it this evening. He is running scared.

This plan could have been different. It could have been radical. The Government could have announced plans to build a modular homes factory to turbo-charge the delivery of affordable homes. It could have given the Land Development Agency, LDA, the power it needs to assemble land banks and deliver homes quickly. It could have fast-tracked a vacant homes tax with teeth to get tens of thousands of vacant homes back into use. Instead, the Government has reverted to type with sweetheart deals for developers, tax breaks for investment funds and a doubling down on failure. Given Fine Gael's track record of failure in housing, why should people believe this plan will be any better than the ones that came before it?

I always think phrases such as "donning hard hats" are a bit pejorative. People put on hard hats when they visit building sites because of health and safety. It is the law of the land. Ministers go out and about to meet people who build homes. I am proud to do that and to listen directly to the people who build homes, including at the LDA site I visited with the Minister of State, Deputy Cummins, the Minister, Deputy Browne, and the Taoiseach this morning, where more than 500 homes are being built, which will come on stream in 2027. It is a real partnership between Dublin City Council, a developer and the LDA, making a real difference. We will not be prisoners of ideology. We will work in every pragmatic way we can to increase the amount of housing and, as a practical example of that, I will always wear a hard hat on a building site.

The Deputy said it was the fourth housing plan. Of course, it is because the housing plan needs to be replaced every few years. It has a deadline. He also suggested that Fine Gael and Fine Gael alone wrote the last four housing plans. Fine Gael has been in government during that time with Fianna Fáil, the Labour Party, the Green Party and Independents. Many political parties in this House have had an opportunity during that period to feed in their constructive suggestions to the housing plan and this is the latest instalment. On the one hand the Deputy criticised us for having a fourth housing plan while on the other he said it was delayed.

I am genuinely intrigued by the Deputy's political position on tax. Perhaps it is his view that tax should not be used as a viability measure in housing. I disagree but it is a legitimate political view to have. Perhaps he believes that when we look at the ledger we should only use the spending side. We in the Government do not. We believe we should use the spending side to invest massive amounts of the people's money in building infrastructure, whether it be for water, wastewater, electricity or the transport projects that are needed in all our constituencies to open up sites, and directly in housing, including social housing that is being built at record levels. However, we also believe we should use the tax side to reduce the cost of building and there have been encouraging signs since we made that change only a few weeks ago in the reaction of the market.

I value the market. It has an important role to play in the delivery of an increasing supply and I am encouraged by what I heard from those responsible for building apartments; that the decision we took, which we voted for and the Social Democrats voted against, will make a real difference in reducing the cost of building an apartment. If we are to reach or exceed 300,000 units we need a lot more apartments to be built. I am also encouraged by the fact that while we have a long way to go, we have seen the highest completion figure for apartments this year so far between the first quarter and third quarter, in any time since 2011 when my party first came into government in the midst of a financial crisis.

On targets, let me be clear. All the data points will continue to be published.

No accountability

Deputies will continue to see the quarterly commencement figures, the completion figures, the planning permission figures and the mortgage drawdown figures, which show there are more first-time buyers now than at any point since 2007. However, just like the approach we took on the action plan for jobs, we will provide an opportunity for a pipeline over the lifetime of the Government and we will be judged on that. We have been clear in our commitment for 300,000 homes over the lifetime of the plan. That is the target. It is the commitment and it is not the ceiling.

Fine Gael promised 40,000 homes in the last election campaign. That was a complete and utter fabrication and now it is making its annual housing target disappear because it cannot stand over its record and it does not want accountability on it. Since Fine Gael took office, rents and house prices have soared to record levels, home ownership levels have collapsed and now more than 5,200 children are growing up without a home. That is more than the overall number of people who were homeless when Fine Gael took office.

At the same, it has given away billions in tax subsidies to developers, with no link to affordability measures. Last year the CEO of Glenveagh Properties, one of the largest developers in Ireland, saw his salary balloon by 80% to €2.7 million. That is where some of these subsidies are going, to those kinds of outrageous levels of remuneration.

Why should anyone believe anything the Tánaiste says now will be different?

We will be judged on the delivery of this plan. It is a good plan and it is only part of the jigsaw. The national development plan is an equally important part in which we took the decision this summer to significantly increase investment. From memory, there will be over €50 billion extra for the enabling infrastructure such as transport, water, wastewater and energy. That will be key. The next instalment will be at the end of this month, when the Minister, Deputy Chambers, will bring forward proposals to accelerate infrastructure delivery. I hope the Deputy will support proposals that require emergency powers to deliver critical infrastructure more quickly. There is too much running to the courts. People have a right to access the courts. It is not a natural extension of the planning process. There is a thing called the common good or the public good and we need to deliver infrastructure much more quickly and I look forward to debating those points.

Why will the Minister for housing not be here this evening?

The Minister for housing is attending an event. He will look forward to having a debate with the Deputy because he looks forward to hearing how the Social Democrats will build all this stuff.

You would think he would turn up then.

It is easy to come in here and say they are against everything.

Where is he going?

Where is he gone?

What does the Deputy think I am, his secretary? I do not know where the Minister is going.

The Tánaiste. Surely, you know where your Minister for housing is on the day he launched the housing plan.

I have missed Deputy Gould's interruptions. He was very quiet. I was wondering why he was so quiet.

I was waiting for the Minister.

Perhaps it has been a tough day at the Sinn Féin office.

Sinn Féin TDs were a bit quieter with the heckling today.

Did he not get enough training from Ivan Yates to debate people this evening?

I do not know who trains Deputy O'Callaghan but he would want to get well trained before the next debate on housing.