I welcome to the Visitors Gallery the visitors from St. Clare's primary school in Cavan town. The teachers include Ms Simmons, Ms King, Mr. Walsh and Ms Shannon. I welcome, in particular, Senator Wilson's twin daughters, Niamh and Maeve. Many of the children have a big occasion on Saturday week. I wish them every success. I hope they have a lovely day in Oireachtas Éireann. Sometimes we have a falling out with Senator Wilson but the visitors, particularly Niamh and Maeve, can be very proud of their local Senator. He is a long-standing and well-respected Member of this House.

I welcome all the students from Cavan. There was a group in earlier also. I hear some of them will be budding politicians. Niamh and Maeve might be Diarmuid's daughters but I hope they do not take any notice of Daddy and join the right party.

I wish to say farewell to Donal Hickey and thank him for his exceptional work. I wish him well in the future. I apologise in advance as Kerry will be beaten on Sunday by Mayo. I am sure he will get over that.

I commend the report issued this morning by the Joint Committee on Justice and Equality, which is chaired by Deputy Ó Caoláin. I ask the Deputy Leader for a debate on the report's recommendations and outputs. It would be very interesting. I will not get into the details of the report; suffice it to say that some of the content is very good and some of it needs to be expanded in respect of rural crime. I would appreciate it if the debate could be facilitated as soon as possible.

This morning, it was reported that only 7% of women who had repeat smear tests for cervical cancer have received their results. That leaves around 2,370 women still waiting on repeat test results, despite being promised priority testing and results within four to six weeks. IT problems in the laboratory company, Quest Diagnostics, and the unexpected high volume of samples have all been mentioned as reasons for the delay. That is absolutely unacceptable. It shows the system is not working and is broken. I call on the Minister for Health, Deputy Simon Harris, to rectify this immediately. If it were not bad enough that these women have had to go through the harrowing process of getting tested again, they are now forced to wait for unacceptably long periods to find out the results. We recently had statements in the House on this issue and all sides agreed that the highest priority was to ensure those who still needed screening completed would be a priority. Screening works and saves lives, as we know, but the Minister must ensure that such a vital service is properly resourced and fit for purpose. Yesterday's figures show the system is still chaotic.

Yesterday, we saw that the number of people homeless in the State reached over 10,000. Other figures suggest the number is much greater. Three thousand seven hundred and eighty-four children have no home to go to tonight. We have become immune to increasing numbers of people with no place to call home.

I want to nip something in the bud. Homelessness is not an ideological battle with Sinn Féin on one side and the Government on the other. On RTÉ radio last night, my colleague, Deputy Ó Broin, had to remind the programme's host that when it comes to homelessness, there are no sides. We want to offer solutions in opposition and are more than happy for Fine Gael, backed by Fianna Fáil, to implement them. We have a Bill that would make it illegal for a landlord who benefited from a buy-to-let tax break to evict tenants and families in order to sell the property. The landlord would have to sell it with the tenants in situ. Eviction is the main cause of family homelessness. The legislative proposals should be made law urgently but on "Morning Ireland" this morning, the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, showed that he simply does not get it. He said Rebuilding Ireland is working, even if the homelessness figure continues to increase. That is completely contradictory. He refused to answer directly the question on how many homes Dublin City Council built last year. He also could not give a timeline for ending child homelessness. The message from the Government is that the policy response is working, and this is all happening because Deputy Micheál Martin and his party, Fianna Fáil, are facilitating budgets and refusing to express no confidence in the Minister. It is time that action was taken.

I thank Senator Craughwell for his kind remarks on my views on Airbnb. Addressing this issue will not solve the housing crisis but at least if the proposal is implemented, it will result in approximately 5,000 new homes in the Dublin area. This is much more than what the Minister has achieved in his term of office.

There is genuine concern about evidence-based policy on housing across the country. Senator Craughwell was correct to comment on the number of cranes on the skyline. Most of the developments in question have traffic management plans. One has to submit a traffic management plan for a major development but an accommodation plan is not needed. The Taoiseach's Department is heading up a project for an innovation centre in the south inner city that will employ approximately 10,000 people. Of those, 7,000, will come from abroad and will need accommodation. Is there an accommodation plan? No, there is not.

The Minister stated this morning the issue is one of supply. I fully agree with him but the problem is that his policies are worsening the supply problem because he calls for review after review. There is a review of apartment sizes, a review of car parking spaces, and a review of the height strategy. Let us examine what these reviews have meant. They have meant withdrawals of planning applications from An Bord Pleanála and the city council to increase the numbers of units on sites and produce new applications.

That was fine. The target is to increase the density, but then he changed the height strategy and we had a further withdrawal of planning applications and no build starts. We then had a review whereby planning applications could be made directly to An Bord Pleanála if they were for more than 100 units. We had another withdrawal of planning applications but the outcome was that nothing was built.

An example of that is the strategic development zones, SDZs, three of which are in the Dublin area. Pressure was put on Dublin City Council and the Department, which was well covered by The Sunday Business Post, by a certain developer and now we have an announcement of a review of the North Lotts strategic development zone. We have sterilised the planning applications for accommodation there because they will wait for the review in respect of the height. We could probably survive one strategic development zone review but we may be led now into reviews of three strategic development zones, which is the North Lotts, the South Lotts and Poolbeg West. Poolbeg West could probably provide 3,500 homes. An Bord Pleanála has not made a decision yet on whether it will give it the go-ahead but I bet the Minister €1 to €100 that when that decision is made it will seek another review because of the Department's change to the height guidelines. The end result of all of that is that nothing has been built. It is review after review. That is not good policy.

I want to be associated with the remarks about Donal Hickey. I will conclude on this point. The National Transport Authority, NTA, announced the MetroLink but there is a marked difference in the way various groups were dealt with regarding the review of the NTA's proposal on MetroLink. That is down to political pressure. I hate to say it but I believe that because residents in the south inner city are probably socially disadvantaged, they did not have a proper input into the alignment of MetroLink. I fully accept that we need a station in the city centre. Proposals were put forward on that and I believe they were ignored because members from the south inner city did not have the same access to senior Ministers and the Taoiseach. It is the case that because of their social and economic backgrounds they have been very much ignored in the entire process.