-----in other cases it will be a private housing tenancy and in other cases it will be a housing assistance payment, HAP, tenancy. Emergency accommodation is not the solution but we will increase the amount of emergency accommodation for a group that may need it that cannot find a place to go. Deputy McDonald is trying to exploit people's fears and anxieties and, if anything, fuel them. That is what the Deputy is trying to do - exploit fears and anxieties and fuel them. When the Deputy should be trying reassure and…

Deputy Ó Broin is shaking his head because he knows that is not true but people listening to you think that is what he is saying, by the way.

That is what people listening to Deputy Ó Broin think he is saying. We all know that 4,000 notices to quit does not turn into automatically 4,000 families in emergency accommodation-----

-----and that will be evident over the next few months. In opposing the Sinn Féin Bill, we are putting down a reasoned amendment setting out our plan, what we have done already in the past six months and what we will do in the months ahead. It is the same wording as the motion that the Dáil voted on last week and that is the reasoned amendment we are putting down to refuse a Second Reading for the Bill. I have read Deputy Ó Broin's Bill. I have it here. I have read it, from cover to cover. It is a short Bill. We ar…

It might be a response to the crisis but it is not a solution to it. Let me give the Deputy some practical examples of the kind of people who may be affected by Sinn Féin's Bill. A garda, for example, assigned to work in a different part of the country, maybe a young doctor in training, or maybe a teacher who went to Dubai for a few years and came home, would not be able to move back into their own home or apartment unless they themselves were at risk of homelessness. If they had the option of moving back into thei…

Second, Sinn Féin's Bill would make it illegal for people to move back into an apartment or a house that their parents bought for them when they go to college. A lot of people - I met somebody in Waterford only a few months ago - bought an apartment in Cork with the express reason of buying it so that their son or daughter could move in there when he or she went to college. Sinn Féin would make that impossible. They would have to commute from Waterford or try and find alternative accommodation. Third, there are peo…

First of all, I know what homelessness looks like. Everyone in this House does. The Deputy should stop trying to pretend that she knows more than us or that she is somehow more compassionate than us.

I have answered the Deputy's question several times.

The fact that she has to misrepresent my answer-----

-----and interrupt me while I am speaking shows that she does not want an answer to her question. That is why she had to misrepresent the answer and that is why she has to interrupt me while I am trying to speak. She has an answer, but she will not hear it. She misrepresents it. She twists it. Quite frankly, a lot of people listening to her spokespeople, because of the way Sinn Féin has twisted this issue, believe that 4,000 notices of termination will result in 4,000 families going into emergency accommodation or …

I am glad she accepts that she has never claimed that and that that is not going to be the case. That is a good thing.

One of the many reasons we will be voting against Sinn Féin's Bill tonight, in the form of a reasoned amendment, is precisely because Sinn Féin would be doing to a lot of people what it is against. It would be saying to them that they cannot move back into their own houses or move their own families into houses they own if they had the option of the box room or moving back in with their parents. Sinn Féin might help some people with this Bill, but it would hurt plenty of others. That is why we will not be supportin…

We are building public homes on public land. We built more public housing last year than in any year since 1975 - that is any year in the Deputy's lifetime or in mine - and I can guarantee we will build more this year. The LDA is building housing. Some 600 homes are under construction at the moment in Shanganagh. I will be travelling to Wicklow on Thursday morning to open a new housing development. The Deputy is welcome to come with me and I will show her the 600 houses under construction not too far from here in D…

-----in transforming our country. It will be a game changer in that regard. It has got off to a slow start. Quite frankly, that is disappointing. We thought more would have been done by now, but it is now getting things done. We will be revising the target for the number of homes the LDA can build in the next 20 years upwards. The LDA had a slow start. It is now getting going. I will be happy to show the Deputy on Thursday so she can see it with her own eyes. We will be revising the targets upwards.

I have never argued that the housing crisis is the fault of the Opposition. Again, the Deputy is trying to put words in my mouth. That is not honest politics. I have always argued that the cause of the housing crisis is multi-factorial. I will not get into that conversation today.

It is simply not the case that I blamed the Opposition for the housing crisis and it is dishonest politics from the Social Democrats to try to put that across.

In the 11 years during which Fine Gael has been in office, we have built over 100,000 houses, by the way, and we are going to build a lot more over the coming years. I am happy to answer the Deputy's questions, to engage with her in robust debate and hear her criticisms but it is a little bit precious for her to say nobody can say anything back to her and how dare we question her claims and point out the progress being made and how dare we bring some balance to this debate. It is a bit precious-----

-----to say that she should not be subject to any criticism and there should be no scrutiny or that it is okay for her to shout us down when we dare to talk back to her.

Like the Deputy, in my constituency service, I deal with housing queries all the time. Probably one quarter or one third of the queries that come through my constituency office are now related to housing. Every circumstance is different. We try to give people the best advice, whether that is advice we give them or advice with the help of the Free Legal Advice Centres, FLAC, or advice from Threshold. Certainly, for anyone who has had a notice to quit served on them and has nowhere to go and no other option, I would …

I answered the Deputy's question. I said that every case is individual and people should seek the best advice they can get from organisations such as Threshold, Free Legal Advice Centres and others. In some cases, people overhold, and in some cases the landlord will accept that, may say he or she understands they have not found a place yet and will let them overhold as long as they continue to pay the rent. That happens all the time. It is not something new. It has been happening for as long as I can remember. Some…