There was a 40% rise in child homelessness last year.

That has been happening for four years due to the Government's policies.

That is not true.

That has not been introduced or enacted.

That is not true.

It has not been enacted. The Taoiseach should talk to his local authority.

It is not agreed. The House has been given two and a half hours tomorrow to deal with the Planning and Development (Amendment) (No. 2) Bill, which is controversial legislation to which many Members have tabled detailed amendments. Late on Thursday, the Government submitted 48 pages of non-consequential amendments to what is an 18-page Bill. There has been no Dáil scrutiny of many of the provisions. Some of them are not controversial; others, relating to judicial reviews, are deeply controversial. The idea that the …

Clearly not.

I wonder if the families who have been rendered homeless will be applauding the speech of the Deputy who has just sat down.

When I listen-----

When I am listening to the Taoiseach talking about housing, I genuinely wonder if he is in the same country as I am. He tells us that progress is being made. I must say that is a deeply disingenuous statement. There are times when I wonder if the Taoiseach is in denial and if he actually believes the things he is saying. In fact, what is clear is that he, just like his other colleagues, including Deputy Brophy, is wilfully misleading the House and the public, not only about his record, but about the record of those…

The reason why is because the Government does not want an election. That is the very definition of cynical. Therefore, let us just look at the progress this Government has made under the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste. Homelessness has increased in the last two years by 19%, and child homelessness by a staggering 40% in the last 12 months. There are now 5,000 single adults in emergency accommodation funded by the Department of the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage. This is the highest level of single-…

-----was ramming through legislation that left those families with tens of thousands of euro of debt-----

-----to fix defective homes that are defective because of the light touch regulation of those Deputies’ parties.

One of the many-----

Deputy McConalogue is very loud today. Where was he last week when his constituents needed him?

One of the greatest-----

One of the greatest misrepresentations of this Government regarding all the Opposition parties, but particularly regarding ours, is that we have no alternatives. With our Private Members' time today, along with other colleagues and the entire Raise the Roof civil society and trade union movement, we will outline those alternatives to the Government yet again.

Sinn Féin has not objected to public housing on public land.

What we have objected to are the sweetheart land deals-----