Last Friday, figures showed that we have reached the highest level of homelessness in this State's history. We also have the highest number of evictions in this country since the Famine. There are 2,500 children who have been in emergency accommodation for longer than one year. The Taoiseach knows that has a devastating impact on children. Many are in my constituency, Dublin North-West. One mother, Shauna, has been in touch with me. She has four children aged 13, seven, three and one. She is an emergency accommodation and is absolutely desperate. The Taoiseach's new rental measures do not protect existing renters from evictions. Will he put in place an emergency ban on no-fault evictions into homelessness? Will he increase the funding to the tenant in situ scheme to include funding for refurbishment so that councils can actually implement the tenant in situ scheme and prevent homelessness?

I disagree with some of the points the Deputy has made. We have the highest population since the Famine. It went up by 52% since 1995. I am not going to go into all of the reasons and factors that underpin the homelessness situation, but they are quite varied and there are ones we did not have to deal with before. The Minister has a specific initiative in terms of families who are homeless. The most effective way is to build more social housing. We are building more social housing than at any time since the 1970s on a consistent basis.

I cannot believe the Taoiseach is justifying-----

I did not interrupt the Deputy. We are going to continue to do that. That should be acknowledged.

On the latter point on the tenant in situ scheme, some councils were taking that funding to do deep retrofitting, which was never its purpose. It was meant to prevent people from falling into homelessness and we have done that in a lot of cases across the board.

Why punish the-----

Interruptions mean other Deputies are deprived.

A rent or eviction freeze would kill the market. That is what the Deputy wants to do. There will be no supply at all and it will make the situation even worse.