It is great to see Sinn Féin defending Labour.

I want to get through the questions.

Deputy Boyd Barrett and I fundamentally disagree with each other. The Government believes that private landlords have a role to play.

Deputy Tóibín again made reference to the private rental sector. I agree with Deputies Mattie McGrath, Michael Collins and Danny Healy-Rae. We need a functioning rental market. I take the point raised by Deputy Michael Healy-Rae about development and looking at planning legislation. I take Deputy O'Donoghue's point about infrastructure. On Deputy McNamara's point, we can look at the planning laws. As he is probably aware, properties over shops that are zoned as commercial do not require planning. This is something …

We have a housing policy. Deputy Ó Broin might not agree with it, but I am more concerned that the people who are homeless know that these measures are in place. The advice to people is to go to their local authority in all circumstances. We are putting the resources in place to ensure people are prevented from going into homelessness.

To conclude-----

I ask the House to support the amendment tabled by the Minister in which he requests that the House decline to give the Bill a Second Reading consequent on a motion agreed on 22 March last.

They can exceed that.

They are encouraged to achieve that and to go well beyond it.

I am sorry.

Clear instructions have been given to the local authorities by the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien. He has written to them-----

-----in the last week. The Deputy is probably aware that each local authority is setting up a specific acquisition unit to deal specifically with the tenant in situ scheme and various other issues. These units are now being established. The Deputy's points, which focus on those matters, will be taken into consideration by the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, and the Department. They will be given active consideration.

I thank everybody who has contributed to the debate. In the limited time I have, I want to deal with facts and to address a number of points that have been raised by individual Deputies. Deputy Ó Broin led off the debate. The tenant in situ scheme has been expanded and has been in place since last April. We would like to have seen a greater take-up. The senior Minister has written to the local authorities to tell them to purchase properties, whatever tenant is in situ . The Deputy spoke about the emergency planning…

It does, while at the same time, this also comes down to that balance between tenants’ rights and so forth. With regard to Deputy Verona Murphy's contribution, we agreed to the amendment tabled by the Regional Group. She spoke about the density guidelines, which are currently being finalised and will go out to public consultation. This is something we are very strong on. Deputy Connolly is gone. She mentioned the help-to-buy scheme.

My apologies to Deputy Connolly.

The help-to-buy scheme provides a deposit on a home, and that is totally overlooked. Yes, people are paying high rents but the scheme provides a deposit on a house and, furthermore, the mortgage-to-rent scheme allows people to stay in their homes, and everything should be about keeping people in their homes. That is of great importance. Deputy Danny Healy-Rae spoke about nothing happening since the moratorium came in. The Government was very definite about the moratorium in that it was always going to be a temporar…

Furthermore, there are at the moment 6,300 emergency beds through all the local authorities for single people and beds are available for 1,500 families. We would like to see more. There are 2,000 coming on stream across all local authority areas, and that is something we very much want to bring on stream. Over the past year, more than 5,700 people were either taken out of homelessness or prevented from going into homelessness. During the moratorium, there were nearly 1,500 such people. That is once again overlooked…

I am talking about the numbers being taken out of homelessness. We accept that homelessness went up, but I think it is overlooked that during that period, of 5,700 people, some 3,700 were prevented from going into homelessness and some 2,000 were taken out of it.

The ban was always going to be temporary and we wanted to ensure that we had further policies to bring landlords back into the market and have them stay in the market. With due respect to Deputy McDonald, her party is seeking a three-year ban on rent increases. What will that do to the landlord market? Furthermore, her party is looking to levy €400 on a second home, so that cost will be passed back to the person who is renting. Her party’s policies are not thought through. We have a document, Housing for All, which…

There were 30,000 units built overall last year, which was a record. What might also be missed is that since this Government has come into being, 10,900 people have been taken off the social housing list. That has to be positive.