I will do a rare thing this afternoon and pay the Taoiseach two compliments on housing. It may not be a surprise that both come with qualifications. Last week I was glad to join new Labour Party councillors Peter O'Brien, Martha Fanning and others for the turning of the sod at Dún Brí in Dundrum. The Land Development Agency, LDA, and Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council will deliver 934 new homes at the site of the former Central Mental Hospital. It is really welcome to see the LDA beginning to deliver. However, we now need it delivering at even greater scale. Turning the sod is one thing, but a family turning the key in the door of their own home is another.

Speaking of turning the key, I have a second compliment. The Labour Party welcomes the housing Minister's plans to end turnkey acquisitions for social housing by the end of next year. For far too long, the State has pumped public money into buying turnkey units from private developers while failing to build our own State capacity to deliver homes. It means the Government has been giving developers tax breaks, selling them public land at a discount and then acquiring those homes back at a premium. It makes no sense and is bad value for money. As the Labour Party has said for years, the private market cannot be relied on to deliver the homes people need at the scale needed. We know this, with almost 6,000 children homeless. That is why the Labour Party has proposed a State construction company along the lines of the National Building Agency established by Seán Lemass and Fianna Fáil in the 1960s. The principle is the same. The State must build homes directly and at scale. While we welcome the ending of turnkey acquisitions, we are concerned that social housing delivery will fall off a cliff after 2028 when the new policy comes into effect. That is why we are saying the Government must effectively resource the LDA and councils to build the necessary homes. The problem is that people now lack trust in the Government's capacity to deliver homes. Its 2024 election campaign was predicated on a false premise. It delivered 10,000 fewer homes that year than it promised. It also unfortunately has form on half-baked and half-abandoned gimmicks like the housing tsar, the apartment standards U-turn and, of course, the notorious "beds in sheds", as they were christened by the Labour Party housing spokesperson, Conor Sheehan.

The Government's promises on social housing are no different. Take the former Irish Glass Bottle site in Ringsend in my constituency. After long negotiations, a deal was struck in 2017 to provide 900 social and affordable homes. A decade on, we see the developer reneging on the commitment to deliver any affordable purchase homes, robbing local people of the chance to own their own home. To add insult to injury, Simon Coveney, the former housing Minister who brokered the deal, has taken up a lobbying job for the developer Johnny Ronan. You could not make it up. It is a question of trust. How can the Taoiseach reassure communities of his Government's capacity to build homes? How can he guarantee the delivery of social housing will not fall off a cliff in 2028?

I welcome the Deputy's contribution in respect of the 1,000 new units in Dundrum. She was at the event last week. It is a real demonstration of momentum in house building and of the role of the Land Development Agency. I do not believe we need two national building agencies. We have the LDA. We do not need a new national construction agency alongside it, which the Deputy seems to be proposing.

I will make a point on social housing because I have heard a lot of commentary. Even this morning, somebody said that only 9,000 were built last year. Since 2020, close to 60,000 social homes have been added by this Government and the previous Government to the social housing stock. In the previous five years it was 34,500. That is the level of momentum on social housing that has occurred in the past five years. That needs to be acknowledged. There has been a consistent commitment to social housing since 2020 that outstrips anything done in the past two decades. We are now the fastest in Europe on completions per capita in house construction. We are completing approximately 7.2 units per 1,000 of the population. That is from Euroconstruct. We are more than double the European average of three units and triple the United Kingdom average of 2.4 units. Completions rose by 40% between 2022 and 2026. Ireland was one of only five European countries where output grew while it declined overall on the Continent. Between July 2020 and now, we have delivered in excess of 180,000 houses. We need to do far more. We acknowledge that.

I know the Deputy has poured scorn on some of the initiatives. We are doing everything we can legislatively, and through the Housing Activation Office, the Critical Infrastructure Bill and enabling important investment in infrastructure, particularly water and the grid, to enable more housing to be built. There is also public transport that will unblock and facilitate substantially more social and affordable housing.

I think the Deputy welcomed the decision on turnkey. We are endeavouring to transition to get a more sustainable market in house construction for the coming decade. The Minister made it clear this morning that we will continue to work with the local authorities. The local authorities will still be in a position to work with builders with a view to building houses they can contract and finance. What we are doing in the context of the turnkey decision is making sure that individual purchasers using the first home or help to buy schemes will not be squeezed out of it by the local authority buying an entire estate. That is a good reform. We have to put pressure on some local authorities to get back to house building. Some have been far better than others in respect of building social housing in their areas.

The Labour Party's policy is to transform the Land Development Agency into a State construction company, not to create a new entity. The Taoiseach always wilfully misunderstands that. I heard nothing from him in his response about the effective resourcing of the LDA and local authorities to ensure they have capacity to deliver once the policy of buying turnkey homes has ended. I am putting the Taoiseach on notice that he has one year to effectively resource the LDA and councils. Otherwise, the capacity of the State to build homes at scale will be a major issue in the run-up to the next elections in 2029. On Saturday I addressed the conference of the Connect Trade Union, the union for craftworkers. They were clear with me that in order to end the housing disaster, the Government needs to resource and create viable apprenticeship pipelines and invest in public capacity. When he was making the turnkey announcement this week, it was unfortunate to see the Minister, Deputy Browne, getting a dig in to local authorities. I notice the Taoiseach did it himself a moment ago. The Minister blamed them for not stepping up to the mark on house building. However, if they are not adequately funded and resourced with the necessary staffing capacity, the local authorities will be unable to deliver at the scale needed once the buying of turnkey homes is at an end.

That is your allocated time, Deputy.

We are putting the Taoiseach on notice on this.

Deputy, that is your allocated time finished.

It is a critical issue for all of those who cannot afford to buy or rent their own home.

The Taoiseach, please.

We are resourcing at an unprecedented scale. I mean, 80% of every house built in this country now has State backing, one way or the other. Some €9 billion has been provided in the budget. Of that €9 billion, €3 billion is to deliver 12,000 new social homes in the budget 2027 allocation. The total Exchequer funding available in 2027 for housing is approximately €7.7 billion, comprising approximately €5 billion in capital and €2 billion in current. The investment in the LDA is additional and will complement that. Lending from the Housing Finance Agency will bring the total to approximately €9.1 billion. There are huge resources going into this, and they will continue to go into this. On the other side, the help to buy and first home schemes are doing a lot for first-time buyers. The percentage of first-time buyers drawing down mortgages is increasing on an ongoing basis. We are not scapegoating local authorities, but the reality is that some have done far better than others in terms of housing. That is just the reality.