Delivery of new apartments fell by nearly one quarter last year and completions for this year are expected to fall another 25%. It is no surprise. In the budget the Minister slashed tax for private developers but he did nothing to tackle land speculation, even as land hoarding runs rampant. In the greater Dublin area alone figures show that almost 41,000 permissions for apartments lie dormant. They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, yet the Minister did the same thing last year and the year before. In Fianna Fáil they just cannot help themselves. They keep chasing the private developer model even when presented with all the evidence that it does not work. Far from cutting costs or delivering more homes, the Government's VAT cut is simply being absorbed by developers. It is a benefit for the private sector and there is no evidence it will address what the Minister, Deputy Chambers, has just called that "viability gap". It is a direct wealth transfer from a society locked out of affordable housing into the pockets of those shutting them out. It is an incoherent and contradictory policy. The Minister must fancy his chances at the FIFA prize for housing if that should ever come to pass.

If the budget primed the locked-out generation for disappointment, the Government's housing plan has pushed them over the edge. We have seen no action on the land speculation, which is delaying delivery, and the reality of land speculation delaying delivery. We see nothing to support small developers who want to help deal with the crisis. There is no move to transform the Land Development Agency into a State construction company that is capable of delivering homes at scale. The Government's strategic housing activation office, so-called, still has no one individual person at the helm. It is tsarless and directionless. We have no idea what it will do yet and after 11 months of waiting the Government's plan looks more like what they call "busy work", rather than a blueprint for change.

All the trends are going in the wrong direction. Despite the litany of measures the Minister has just articulated, the reality is that having wrongly overstated the housing figures last year under then Minister for housing, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, the Government will miss its building targets again this year. Construction activity has declined for the seventh month in a row. The number of children in homelessness is, shockingly, climbing towards the 5,500 mark. In a move that is beyond satire, the State is even funding the excellent SpunOut organisation to advise young people by video on how to cope with the move back to their parents' house when it is the Government that has priced them out of the rental and purchase markets. It would be comical if it was not so serious, with 80% of the population priced out of renting and 60% not being able to afford to buy a house on their salary.

It is clear that the Government's policies are simply not achieving for people. We have seen it with the help-to-buy scheme and the first home scheme. When will the Minister finally accept that his Government's policies are failing? When will we see the radical reset of housing policy that the Housing Commission sought and that aspiring homeowners and aspiring home renters throughout the country so desperately need?

I thank the Deputy. First of all, I will state the facts around what we are doing to invest in housing throughout our country. On the capital side, approximately €7.2 billion is being provided in the recently-published national development plan for 2025 with an additional €4 billion around current expenditure. That is more than €11 billion of State investment for the provision of housing, supporting the Department of housing in that work. What the Deputy failed to mention in her commentary and her analysis is that complementing the need to ramp up social and affordable homes is that we have to have a viable housing market. Everything she says is about a State construction company and is attacking any measure that we make in terms of viability on the VAT side. She has attacked the apartment guidelines and attacks anything that relates to having a functioning market. Many young people living in this State want to own and buy their own homes. They want to have private development happen along with the social and affordable provision we are providing throughout the country. We are making significant progress on the provision of social homes. Over recent years we have seen the highest level of social housing delivery in decades, delivered by this Government and by the last one. We continued and extended the help-to-buy scheme - something the Deputy continually questions - an intervention on affordability in housing. She criticises such things as the first home scheme as a policy, which is another intervention to support affordability in housing supply. What we do not hear from Members on the opposite side is measures needed to ensure we have a viable market for housing.

The State is stepping up when it comes to its role, as I said, in social and affordable housing but we have to narrow the viability gap. The Deputy correctly referenced the report's findings in terms of the high cost of apartment construction. We have sought to narrow that gap with the measure on VAT from 13.5% to 9%, for example, and to increase viability with the apartment guidelines. We have enhanced the corporate tax deduction to reduce the cost of delivery of an apartment for cost rental. We have taken a number of measures to try to narrow that viability gap-----

It is not-----

-----so that many of the uncommenced planning permissions for apartments are commenced in order that young people can buy and live in them.

I have not heard from the Deputy any measure that she would take to enable the market to increase overall housing supply. We know from the Department of Finance that about €20 billion of capital is required to reach 50,000 homes per year. The State is stepping up on its side of social and affordable housing provision. However, to bridge the gap, we need a viable housing market where people can buy and own their own homes. One of the central issues is that we have had a significant viability gap in recent years. This Government has taken practical steps under the Minister, Deputy James Browne, to address that gap but the Deputy would make it worse. Housing supply would fall under her proposals because she rejects every measure that has been taken in terms of narrowing the viability gap.

That is not true.

We need a more realistic conversation about housing supply if we are serious about addressing it.

Unfortunately, anyone listening will realise that, of course, we in opposition put forward reasonable, costed constructive proposals. Indeed, the Labour Party supported the Land Development Agency. We support the tenant in situ scheme. We support measures that are proven to assist people who wish to be able to buy or rent their own homes - the generation that has been locked out of home ownership or even home rental. What the Minister tends to do in government is focus on what the Opposition has not done. He never acknowledges that we have put forward sustainable costed alternatives to his failed measures. The Government's measures have patently failed.

Among the constructive proposals that we put forward are to look at other countries. Let us look at other countries that have models that work. In Vienna, 40% of the rental stock is owned by limited-profit housing associations. Low-, high- and middle-income earners there all have access to stable long-term homes. There are long-term fixed-interest loans providing financial stability to those who wish to have a home of their own. In Ireland, as the Minister keeps saying to us, the issue is not money but how it is spent.

I call the Minister to respond.

The Government is choosing to spend it in the wrong way. Of course, there is space for the private market but the Government absolutely neglects the huge role the State could and should be playing to ensure people can get a home.

The State has never played a bigger role in the provision of housing in terms of subsidies, supports and the intervention-----

It is the wrong way, subsidising developers.

Deputy, please.

That is reflected in terms of the provision of social housing and in the role of the LDA. This Government brought in cost rental and has expanded cost rental to help affordability of rents for young people. We have extended the help-to-buy scheme. We have the first home scheme. The Deputy did not respond with what she would do to take practical steps to ensure we have-----

This manifests-----

-----a viable housing market.

There are many thousands of young couples who want to buy and own their own homes. The State plays a certain role in terms of the enabling provisions around infrastructural development in the economy and also supporting it through help to buy and other affordability schemes, but we also need to ensure that the market can deliver the other element of housing supply in addition to what we are doing on social and affordable homes.

We welcome the fact the Labour Party supports the Land Development Agency, LDA. We further capitalised the LDA in recent weeks. We have set out the most ambitious, radical step-change in the State's intervention in housing in the national development plan, which will result in a significant ramping up of the supply of social and affordable homes.

Thank you, Minister. Deputy Ivana Bacik.

But the other elements of housing supply involve the market functioning-----

Thank you, Minister. The time is up.

-----to meet the overall supply targets and those are the practical steps this Government is taking.