The Minister does provoke.

If you just answered the question, Minister, we would not have this problem.

Answer the question.

It is now a year since the Government took the disastrous decision to end the ban on no-fault evictions. At the time, we told the Government that if it did that without the appropriate supports and prevention measures being in place, homelessness would rise month on month, as it has done. There has been a 13% increase in homelessness among people and a shocking 16% increase in homelessness among children. Almost 14,000 people, 4,000 of them children, under the Minister's watch, are in Department of housing-funded e…

How is it possible at a time of rising social housing output that homelessness is also rising? The answer is simple. The targets the Government has set in its plan are too low and it is not meeting those targets. The Minister is correct that just over 8,000 new-build social homes were delivered last year, which is 1,000 short of the Government's target. When you look at the total number of new-build social homes the Minister promised to deliver since taking office, the number of homes he has not delivered is 9,527.…

When the Minister's period of office comes to an end, he will be remembered for one thing and one thing only: presiding over the single largest increase in single, family and child homelessness in modern history. There is only one reason people become homeless: a failure of the State to ensure an adequate supply of social and affordable homes to meet the needs of households in crisis. In fact, one of the figures the Government released in its information dump on Holy Thursday demonstrated that he is the first Minis…

And yet homelessness will rise.

The Minister for homelessness. That is what the Minister will be remembered as.

It is no smiling matter. Child homelessness is no smiling matter.

You are the Minister for homelessness.

Why would he answer a question about rising homelessness under his watch? Why would he do that?

Shame on you.

Apologies, Leas-Cheann Comhairle.

Blame for homelessness is much more significant. I am expressing the anger of the people the Minister is failing.

I apologised to you, Leas-Cheann Comhairle.

Absolutely not. That is rubbish.

Hear, hear.

It is going backwards.

I commend the Government side, particularly the diligent backbenchers, on making an incredibly unsuccessful scheme sound successful. Three grants being drawn down in Longford in a year and a half is not, by any normal definition, a success. There were only 100 across the State.

This scheme is good in principle but an absolute failure in practice. If the Minister wants to sell three drawdowns in a year and a half to his constituents as a success, far be it for me to get in his way. The Minister has had the report of the Housing Commission on the right to housing for almost a year. When will he publish it? More importantly, when will he act on it?