The housing completion figures announced earlier show that we are thousands of homes short of the target the Tánaiste set. The number of homes is almost 5,000 short of the 41,000 that he promised to deliver. Of course, the Government is trying to run away from that target now. The housing Minister has decided that annual targets are a distraction. A distraction from what? This is the number of new homes that the Tánaiste said are needed and that he promised to deliver. The 41,000 target is there, in black and white, published by the Government just weeks before the election. If the Tánaiste needs to jog his memory in this regard, he can consult the Fine Gael election manifesto because the 41,000 target was printed in black and white in that as well.

We all know that this is not the only housing target the Government has missed by a country mile. In the run-up to the election, the Tánaiste was categoric that 40,000 new homes would be delivered by the end of 2024. That was another bogus figure, trotted out despite mountains of evidence that it was pie in the sky.

Out of ideas and with their housing plan in tatters, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil have now reverted to type. They are offering tax breaks for developers and sweetheart deals for investment funds, along with new legislation with the sole purpose of letting already record rents rips. Instead of providing affordable homes for people to buy, the Government is, in the words of the Taoiseach, pivoting "more strongly to" the private sector. This means turning hard-pressed renters into cash cows for investment funds and bleeding them dry to feed the vultures.

This is not an academic debate about numbers. It is about people in their 20s, 30s and 40s who are still living in their childhood bedrooms and feeling hopeless and helpless because their lives are passing them by. They are missing out on milestones, relationships, career opportunities and even starting families. It is about the growing number of elderly renters who are at risk of homelessness. It is about the 5,321 children who are growing up without homes, all because successive Governments have doubled down on failure. What is happening is not an accident; it is a choice. Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil have led us here. Today's housing numbers are yet another monument to their failure.

Under the Tánaiste's watch, a housing crisis has morphed into a housing disaster and from a housing disaster into a social catastrophe. Despite this, the Tánaiste is going to stand up in a minute and tell us about what a great job he is doing. The gall is incredible. Will the Tánaiste admit that he has broken yet another election promise. Why did the Government publish annual housing targets just before the election and then tear them up straight afterwards?

You would swear the number of new houses was down today, based on that. The number of new homes completed last year represents an increase of 20% on the previous year. For the people listening at home - and just in case they missed the bit at the start - there were almost 6,000 homes built last year than the year before. We are now living in a country where 600 first-time buyers are buying their first homes every week. The Deputy talks about people living in box rooms. Yes, there are too many. He talks about hopelessness. It is not hopeless for those 600 people this week who will get the keys to their homes and begin their lives. These are the people I see, right across my community in Wicklow and right across this country as well.

We have completion figures today that show momentum. They are a positive sign. There is now momentum back in the housing market. The Deputy is correct. That did not happen by accident; it happened as a result of the policies that we are pursuing and that are injecting confidence again in an ability to build in the private sector and a realisation across all parts of the State that this housing emergency is the responsibility of all parts of the State to fix. I refer here to Uisce Éireann, the ESB and local authorities, which need to zone more land as opposed to just passing motions condemning the housing situation. The local authorities actually need to help.

Let us be honest. I would say the Deputy was a bit surprised that the figures are as high as they are today. I would not go as far as to say that the Deputy was disappointed, but I would say he was surprised.

Stop.

The ESRI forecast that 35,000 homes would be built. We have exceeded that. The Central Bank of Ireland forecast that 33,500 would be built. We have exceeded that. The Irish Fiscal Advisory Council forecast an assumption for this year of 34,500. We have exceeded that. We need to continue to do much more. The plan that this Government has is to deliver 300,000 homes by the end of 2030. This is a positive contribution towards that. It is a significant increase. If the Deputy looks at the graph, he will see that it was the highest number of housing completions since 2011. The Deputy likes to talk about my party being in government a long time. When I came into the Dáil, there were approximately 7,000 homes completed. Has the Deputy looked at the graph? It is the highest number since 2011. Do we want it to be higher? Of course, we do. There is momentum now, and we have to build on that.

The Deputy and I have different policy views, and I respect that. We debate them and we will continue to do so. However, I suggest that some of the policies that we adopted in the budget we have yet to even see the full potential of because they were obviously introduced later in the year. During the course this year, we will begin to see their impact. That is not just my view. The Deputy will have seen the Bank of Ireland economic analysis published this week and what it is hearing from the market in terms of the positive signs of the decisions that we took.

We will work constructively with anybody in this House. We have seen the number of planning permissions increase significantly. We have seen positivity on commencements, namely a doubling of the number between December and November. More first-time mortgages were approved in the first 11 months of 2025 than every before. There is a housing emergency in this country,. It is an emergency if you do not have a roof over your head or are trying to move out of the box room. However, today's figure represents an increase in housing supply, and that is a good thing.

Just over a year ago, the Tánaiste promised voters 41,000 homes in his party's election manifesto. Just weeks before the election, the Government promised the delivery of 41,000 homes in 2025. The Government failed to meet the target it set for itself by almost 5,000 homes, and the Tánaiste is dressing up this failure as some sort of success.

The Government is presiding over a situation where rents are at record levels, where the numbers of adults living in their childhood bedrooms are at record levels and where house prices are at record levels. Almost 17,000 people are now homeless. That is a terrible indictment of the Tánaiste's and Fine Gael's time in office. Two hundred and sixty-seven of those people are pensioners. There are 5,321 children growing up without homes. That is another record level, and the Tánaiste is presenting this as somehow being progress and success. Will he admit that he has broken his election promises? Will he explain why the Government has ripped up its annual housing targets? Why does it not have annual targets anymore?

We have a target. We have a whole plan. It is fully funded, it is published and it contains a commitment to deliver 300,000 homes. We are making progress in relation to that as well.

Why did you get rid of annual targets?

We have explained that very clearly. We made a decision. Whether a home is built in December or January does not make a fundamental difference.

It does.

What makes a fundamental difference is the total amount of supply built over a five-year period.

We do not know your targets.

Sorry, Deputy O'Callaghan is the deputy leader of his party. Maybe Deputy Hearne will get a turn one day. Deputy O'Callaghan is well able; he asked the question.

We built 6,000 more homes last year than the year before. That is progress. We built 30,330 in 2024 and 36,284 homes last year. The Deputy does not want any hope in relation to this. The Deputy wants to continue to talk down the progress that is being made. It is the highest number of completions-----

That is untrue. You are so cynical.

The cacophony from those opposite is hard to take. It is the highest number of completions since 2011 - from single-digit thousands to 36,200. Let us build on that. Let us come forward with ideas as to how to take that forward, but let us take at least one minute or a couple of seconds to acknowledge that the number of housing completions for last year exceeded the forecasts of the ESRI, the Central Bank of Ireland, the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council and, probably, the Deputy's own expectations as well.

You are going to evade your targets and your promises.

Let us build on that work and help more young people get out of their parents' homes. While we are comparing figures, let us compare apples with apples. The population of this country has increased by more than 750,000 over a ten-year period, but the Deputy never wants to factor that in-----

You have known that for a decade. You have been in power for a decade and you have not delivered.

-----as well when the term "highest ever" is used. We have had the highest number of first-time mortgage drawdowns ever since figures began and 600 people are getting keys to their first home every week. That is progress. We have a lot more to do, but these figures today give us momentum to build on.

I am amazed that the Tánaiste is trumpeting success in light of the housing disaster that people face in this country. Tomorrow, we will have the end-of-month figures for homelessness. At the end of December, 16,996 people were homeless. A record number of people, including 5,321 children, were living in the misery of emergency accommodation.

Whatever the figures are tomorrow, there will be an unacceptable level of homelessness.

Next week, the Government plans to bring in a Bill that is going to lead to some of the most, if not the most, unaffordable rents anywhere in Europe being increased even further because market rents will then dictate what any tenancy that ends can be set at. Market rents are currently €2,600 a month and in much of Dublin they are more often €3,000 or even €3,500. These are shocking levels. We now have the CSO figures that show 36,000, which, honestly, is a marginal improvement.

We would have more if the Deputy did not object to them.

According to the Central Bank, we need 50,000 to 60,000 houses a year in order for the Government to meet its 2030 targets. There is not a hope in hell of reaching the housing need that has been agreed on by many bodies, including the Government.

Stop objecting to them.

By the way, Mitchell McDermott today proved that this has nothing to do with planning permissions. We have loads of planning permissions.

Stop objecting.

It is not planning objections that are the problem, as Mitchell McDermott said. We have 32,000 planning permissions that are being sat on. There are no judicial reviews, they have the planning permission, but they are not happening because of viability. What does that mean? It means profits - profits for your developer friends - or the lack of infrastructure, such as water infrastructure. We know from Irish Water that it is only being given enough money by the State for 30,000 units a year when we need 50,000 to 60,000 units. The Government is not putting in the infrastructure.

What about the developers, landlords and investors? The Minister, Deputy Lawless, summed up the Government's policy earlier this month. He said:

[Housing] is about international markets. It’s actually a spreadsheet in Zurich or New York or Antwerp, more so than a builder looking at a site in Longford or Roscommon, that’s actually deciding what happens here.

That is it. That is the policy. The investors in Zurich, Antwerp and New York, profit-driven, tell the Government to jump, and it says, “How high?” Meanwhile, the housing misery continues, with the most unaffordable rents, record numbers of people homeless, totally unaffordable house prices, speculation and land hoarding, as developers and investors sit on planning permissions, waiting for the Government to pass even more legislation in their favour, so profits can go up.

I know we come at these things from a very different place ideologically, but we need private investment to help build homes. We do not wish to live in a country where every house is built by the State. Can I just be clear about that? We want to build social homes. I think we are on track to build a very significant number this year, and we will have the figures for 2025. We want to build affordable homes and, heaven forbid, we would also like more private homes, and that ain’t a bad thing either. There are lots of people who want to move out of their box room for the first time. They are not looking for a local authority home in all instances; they are actually looking for a home to buy. Planning objections are a factor in relation to that. They might not be in RTÉ, when the Deputy was out there the other night, but people do care about planning objections.

The Minister, Deputy Carroll MacNeill, and Deputy Barry Ward are coming to work every day, pursuing policies to deliver more houses. Deputy Boyd Barrett is seeing housing schemes in his constituency, and saying, “We don’t want that one, that one and the other one.” That is not helpful or constructive.

The Deputy is right that homeless figures are too high, of that there is no doubt. That is why we are continuing to invest more in emergency accommodation. It is also why we have to continue to understand better the composition of our homelessness figures so we can pursue the correct policies.

Viability is important. Again, we have different ideological views. However, unless the Deputy’s view is that the State must build everything, then we need to make sure that it is viable for people to build homes because if it is not, they will not build them. That is how business works, as the Deputy knows. We have already seen very positive indications from the decision we took to reduce the VAT rate in terms of people now being much more interested in building apartments in this country. That is not just my view, by the way. The Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland looks at apartments, and it has said there are five categories that it looks at. Before our changes, only two were viable, but now a number more are deemed viable as well, so that is progress.

At a European level, there are real housing challenges, so we are not the only country grappling with this. In Europe now, we actually have one of the strongest rates of home completion in the entire European Union. For every 1,000 people living in Ireland now, 5.9 homes are being completed, whereas the EU average is 3.3. I stand here very aware that there is a housing emergency, very aware that it is the biggest domestic issue bar none, very aware that people are putting life decisions on hold until they can get a home, absolutely, but also very confident that the decisions we are making now, hard at times as they are, will yield real benefits in terms of increased supply. Supply, supply, supply is the way forward in relation to this.

We have taken a number of actions. The Deputy made a fair point in relation to the infrastructure that is needed to enable housing. I agree with that. I hear, right across the country, "We have zoned land here. If only it was serviced." That is why, this week, we announced a €1 billion fund that every local authority, including in Dún Laoghaire, can apply for. It opened this week, and it closes at the end of February. There is an onus on every local authority to realise it is part of the solution here, or part of the problem. It is up to them. They need to put in their applications now to draw down that funding to help put in the road infrastructure, water, wastewater or whatever is needed to open up more sites. In relation to infrastructure, I agree. In relation to viability, we have different views on that, but I believe we have taken a number of measures. We will continue every day to engage constructively with any idea that can help to increase supply further.

We do not need a single further unaffordable home, not a single one. What we need is affordable homes. I did not say they should all be social. I said they should all be affordable or social. The problem is that houses being delivered with rents of €3,500 or for €600,000 or €700,000 are totally unaffordable to ordinary people, but are very good for investors. We are saying we need a State construction company to deliver the infrastructure that the Tánaiste accepts the Government is not delivering, and to deliver social and affordable housing. We need a no-fault eviction ban so people do not get evicted through no fault of their own into emergency accommodation, including, increasingly, older and very vulnerable people. We need to stop the speculation and land hoarding. We need to stop dancing to the tune of investors in Zurich and so on in order to deliver the housing that we want.

By the way, on my own personal record, for one of the developments we opposed, we said there should be more social and affordable housing because it was only getting 10%. We opposed it-----

One of them. What about the other ten or 12?

Deputy Cummins, please.

We opposed it, and we got the social housing. We said there should be more social and affordable housing, and we got the 100% because we opposed it.

You opposed it. Then you go looking for votes at the same houses you objected to.

Order, please. The Minister should be showing a good example.

It is disgraceful.

It was only 10%. We got 100% because we put in a submission on it.

None of those families would be living there if it was down to you.

The Minister, Deputy Carroll MacNeill, is reminding us of the irony of knocking on doors, looking for votes, at the same doors that you opposed ever being built. It is something we should all reflect on in this House. We all come under pressure in our communities to object to this and object to that. Sometimes-----

It is not true. We said we should have social and affordable housing.

It is true.

You guys can take this up in Dún Laoghaire. I think it is a point worth considering.

I will happily list them out.

Says the special adviser to Eoghan Murphy.

I will happily list them out.

Sorry. Hang on a second.

She is getting personal but I cannot.

She is the democratically elected TD for Dún Laoghaire.

It is about his record as a TD.

The Minister is well able to handle herself, and I am sure she will pursue this.

There is a direct correlation between supply and demand and affordability. The Deputy is right. We all want to see more affordable homes. We know that one of the things that drives up prices is if there is more demand for homes than supply, and, therefore, we have to increase supply. I think we agree on that point. I fundamentally disagree that we do not need more planning applications or more planning permissions granted. We absolutely do. We also need more land zoned. I am getting pretty tired of the local authorities that think they have done enough. We need to over-zone land because not all zoned land actually correlates to new housing developments. Every local authority now needs to look at what it can do to make sure there is enough zoned land. What we will do in partnership with them is help to provide the funding to make sure that land is then serviced.