I would like to say fáilte to the British ambassador agus roimh na daltaí freisin. I want to begin by wishing the Tánaiste, his family, all Deputies, people watching at home and all the staff in the Oireachtas, who do very important work, a very happy and peaceful Christmas. I also want to take this opportunity to highlight the plight of Oireachtas broadcast workers who will now be laid off for the Christmas period without pay. This is completely unacceptable treatment of a group of workers who carry out a vital role in our democracy. The broadcast workers should be employed directly by the Oireachtas for performing a key role in our public service.

The end of the year is a good time to take stock, celebrate achievements and identify areas for improvement. Regrettably, for this Government, successes are thin on the ground. Its report card looks especially bleak. This Government is awash with cash and addicted to wasting it. Despite budget surpluses, it still managed to make nearly everyone worse off. The ESRI published a new report which confirms what people can already feel in their pockets - they are paying more for everything with less take-home pay. Disposable incomes of most workers will fall because of this Government's budgetary measures. Please do not tell us the budget helped those who needed it most. That simply is not true. The poorest 10% of workers have seen the biggest decrease in their incomes. The poverty rate among older people has soared to almost 20%. You have made choices to hit people hardest who do not have a single cent to spare. This is a Government that thinks nothing of breaking its promises like its pre-election pledge that 40,000 homes would be delivered last year, which evaporated into thin air as soon as the polling stations closed. Today's ESRI report lays bare your continued abject failure on housing. Just 35,000 homes have been delivered this year and 36,000 next year. This is far short of the 50,000 to 60,000 new homes needed each year. This Government's handling of the housing crisis has been an unmitigated disaster. This failure means that the dreams of home ownership of tens of thousands of people have been crushed. It has resulted in thousands more families and children becoming homeless. This has a devastating impact on children. It means toddlers in cramped hotel rooms are delayed in being able to learn how to crawl. It limits the lives and ambitions of countless people all over the country who feel trapped, anxious and hopeless. That is your record on housing.

The Government's list of broken promises does not end there. You promised to deliver a roadmap to reduce childcare fees to €200 a month in your first 100 days of office. Nearly a year in, we got a half-baked plan from the Minister yesterday that gives no indication about when fees will come down to €200 - another broken promise. Despite promises to prioritise disability, you deliberately made disabled people poorer and slashed their incomes by up to €1,400 - yet another broken promise. Do you regret making all of these promises to the public and breaking them?

Thank you, Deputy.

What do you say to the record number of children and their families who will spend Christmas in emergency homeless accommodation?

I thank Deputy O'Callaghan. I wish him, his family, his Social Democrats colleagues and everybody a happy Christmas. I think the broadcasting issue he mentioned is a matter for the Oireachtas rather than directly a matter for the Government. As the leader of a political party in the Oireachtas, I am happy to engage with other parties in relation to the issue of the Oireachtas broadcast workers. It is hard to disagree with the Deputy's analysis of the situation. I would be happy to have follow-up conversations with him on that.

When you started doing the report card and you said you were going to do achievements and critiques, I thought you would give us a few on the plus side. Considering you did not, I will mention one or two. We have delivered in less than a year of the Government being in office a record national development plan of €275.4 billion that can be invested in projects across the country that will protect our country now and into the future, planning reform, rent protection nationwide, expansion of vacant property grants, free schoolbooks, hot school meals, funding for DEIS plus to help our most vulnerable children, the national broadband plan rolled out ahead of time and on budget, surgical hubs, free HRT and the national education therapy service now established. I wanted to reference some of them to balance the ledger.

The Deputy is also right to highlight this Christmas that there are still far too many people who are homeless in this country, and particularly far too many children. We had a meeting of the Cabinet committee on housing this week. At it, we heard directly from the CCMA, the representative group with responsibility for representing chief executives of local authorities. I specifically referenced to them at that meeting action 5.7 of the Government's housing plan, which talks about social housing allocations needing to prioritise children in long-term homelessness. It is due back through the Department of housing early in 2026. I urge all of us - I make this as a non-partisan point - with our network of councillors across the country to look at how social allocation schemes for local authorities prioritise children in relation to homeless. I accept that we need to build more social homes, and we will do so, but we are also now providing more social homes than at any time since the 1970s. However, I do not believe we are seeing enough of those homes allocated to children and families in long-term homelessness. Some local authorities have tried some innovative things in this area. There is a lot more work that needs to be done. I say to everybody requiring a home and wanting to see progress on the housing emergency this Christmas and as we go into 2026 that this Government is putting an extraordinary level of public funding behind the delivery of housing. Our new national housing plan and the national development plan show just that.

We must ensure that we have zero tolerance for the bureaucracy and red tape that delay the delivery of much-needed homes and the infrastructure to provide them. The national development plan, read alongside the material on the new reforms around infrastructure delivery and the housing plan, will make a real and meaningful difference.

We are seeing some encouraging signs in relation to housing supply, completions, planning permissions and first-time buyers. There are positive indicators regarding all of these metrics. However, I certainly do not stand here this Christmas suggesting that we are anywhere near where we need to be on homelessness, particularly in relation to children. The social housing allocation model should be revised in accordance with action 5.7 of the housing plan. That is something I genuinely want to see prioritised in the weeks and months ahead.

There will be more children spending Christmas in homeless emergency accommodation this year than ever before in the history of the State. When Fine Gael entered office, there were 641 children in homeless emergency accommodation. That was too high. There are now 5,247 children who will spend this Christmas without a home. This has a detrimental impact on each and every child involved. It can often mean missing key developmental milestones. Yet, the Tánaiste did not even acknowledge the damage homelessness does to children. I ask him to acknowledge the damage being done by his Government to children in homelessness. Does he not see that damage? Next year, will the number of children in homeless emergency accommodation grow even further, to record levels again, or will the Government reverse the trend? Can the Tánaiste tell us that the Government is going to reverse this?

My apologies if the Deputy thought I had not acknowledged the damaging effect of homelessness on a child. Of course I acknowledge it. It is a statement of fact. The Government works constructively with local authorities and others night and day to try to remove children from homelessness.

I wish to make a statistical point, but I do not make it to take away from the seriousness of the issue, because all children must be protected and all people in homelessness need to be supported. The point is that the growth of our population has also had a direct impact on the numbers. That can be seen in the published monthly data. We have to have a serious debate about this. The population of this country has grown by around seven times the EU average at a time when we have an acute supply issue in relation to housing. We have to consider all of these issues.

Child homelessness has increased tenfold since Fine Gael entered government.

We have to consider all these issues in the round. Yes, we have seen far too many children in homelessness and emergency accommodation. That is a statement of fact. We are not where we need to be. That is why I have outlined how we intend to take specific actions under the new national housing plan. It is why the Minister, Deputy Browne, has taken measures to provide ring-fenced funding to local authorities in order that they can specifically buy homes, but only on the understanding that those homes will be allocated to families experiencing homelessness. We are trying innovative things. While the numbers are still too high, we have seen more children exit homelessness this year than in previous years. We are working to get more people out of homelessness. This is a major issue.