The Deputies would, absolutely. It would be condemned as guillotining and all the rest of it. Anyway, 1 November is the date the Minister is targeting. I will take up the offer made by Deputy McDonald. The legislation will be published and we will work with the Opposition to get it through as quickly as possible.

I thank the Deputy for raising the issue, which is more specific to the issue of the winter eviction ban. The residential tenancies (deferment of termination dates of certain tenancies) Bill 2022 was approved by Government this morning and will be published shortly. The Bill gives greater security of tenure to tenants during the coming winter period. Specifically, the Bill will defer certain notices of termination served on tenants for the period on the day after the date of the passing of this legislation and endi…

The Bill proposes to stagger the end of the protections afforded in it to ensure there is no cliff-edge impact on 1 April next year. Importantly, the Bill applies to licences and tenancies in student-specific accommodation and to student tenancies in the general rental market. The Bill is required, as I said earlier, due to the ongoing acute supply constraints in the residential rental sector and the increase in homelessness presentations over the winter. We want to reduce the burden on homelessness services and th…

The HAP scheme and the RAS have been there for a long time. If we did not spend the money on the HAP, there would be far more people homeless. It is not a simple matter of saying we should get rid of HAP and start building.

I know. I am articulating a basic principle around this. We will build more houses and more social homes, as we are doing and will be doing consistently. I have seen no mechanism from any other party. Some parties say we should be building 20,000 social homes. There is no capacity at present to build 20,000 social homes. It is not there. We all need to be honest. It is all good for Deputies to go on television and radio and state they think there should be 20,000. They write a paragraph and it is a policy that we s…

I am making this point generally. This is what gets said. To deal with the HAP-----

I am doing so. I am speaking about the HAP. The only way to deal with it is to build more social houses but that will be over time. As we build more social houses, we will reduce our reliance on the HAP and the RAS.

That is what the Government is doing. That is what we are committed to doing. We will work with the Opposition on any constructive proposal it has on this issue and on the Bill that will come before the House in the next while.

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue. I understand the genuine disappointment with the latest developments in this project. I was in Galway on Friday and all the engagements regarding the economic development of Galway, including the expansion of Genesys, the expansion of the Galway Technology Centre and the launch of the Irish clinical academic training programme, were very positive. Many people see the N6 Galway city ring road as being essential for the growth and development of Galway, while others disagree…

That is difficult. The agencies involved, and all State agencies, have to be very conscious of the predicament families find themselves in when someone makes a declaration that a house will be purchased via CPO or taken over. It causes genuine stress and anxiety. It can also put people into a state of limbo for many years whereby they are not in a position to do anything. That is not satisfactory. The wider issue is the need to streamline our planning. Day after day, people talk about the crisis in housing and gett…

That is the only way we can do it. At the moment, Europe is saying it takes an average of eight years from concept to a wind farm being in position. There has to be an overall public good that triumphs over our individual perspectives and considerations. We have not achieved consensus in this House or society more generally, if we are honest.

We need honesty in the debate.

It is not two years ago. This is a new scheme that was introduced, as the Deputy has just said, via legislation in this House. It is a new scheme because homeowners and representative groups did not believe the previous scheme, which was welcomed by the Deputies in the House at the time, went far enough. We met residents and representative groups and dramatically improved the scheme with regard to issues around giving financial assistance for all of the pre-costs such as engineering costs and dealing with the renta…

We are not trying to make it look as if we are going after somebody, which is what the Deputy is saying we should do.

He is saying we should try to make it look like we are going after the industry. That is not what we are at.

We are not trying to make it look like anything.

No, we are not going after the people.

I know that there are campaigns, and political representatives will say things to ensure they are in tandem with those campaigns, but the Government has provided €2.8 billion.

Through the Chair, we have provided €2.8 billion to deal with this. That decision has been taken. The money has been bookended and financially provided for in the Government accounts and so on, so that is not rhetoric; it is real. As for the design of the scheme, the guidance documentation is substantial with respect to how the Housing Finance Agency, local authorities and all the various stakeholders engage and make this happen. We want this to happen. However, there have been various representatives all along the…

What I would say through the Chair is-----