Yes.

It is in our budget statement.

They are not imaginary. They are corporations.

The virus kills people.

It was not graduated.

The decision is about ideology.

We will be back to level 5.

Then it will be later and longer. There will be more damage-----

But our ICU capacity-----

That is not what NPHET says.

We have a frightening second wave of coronavirus. The country is moving to level 3 tonight and I believe it is only a matter of time before we move to level 4 and then level 5. The Government took the decision to lift the evictions ban and a wave of evictions has restarted. In my constituency, I could give many examples. Does the Minister not agree that now is the time to reinstate the evictions ban to prevent people being made homeless at a time of coronavirus and of restrictions?

The Minister is trying to tell us black is white. He lifted the eviction ban. The consequences are beginning to come through now and all the spin in the world will not change that reality. The second Act of 2020 that the Minister brought in is extremely limited and only relates to situations involving arrears, inability to pay and so on. I will give a concrete example that shows how landlords will continue to get around this. A woman, let us call her Jane, who lives in Knocklyon was subject to an eviction attempt b…

I have another two cases in Tallaght of people who have notices to quit from their landlords. In this case, the excuse the landlord is going for is that they are selling the property. I do not necessarily believe that they are selling the property. I have seen this many times in the past. There are definite holes in the Minister's legislation, which is why we favour a reintroduction of the full evictions ban. We are bringing forward legislation to do precisely that. We know that a ban on evictions works. We have th…

I presume the Minister of State, Deputy Peter Burke, will take this question. This is the same question that Deputy Joan Collins asked a moment ago. I am somewhat bemused by the answer, which seemed to be saying the Government was for public homes on public land. The Government is gaslighting us. It is not building public homes on public land. It is proceeding to privatise public land and hand it over to private developers. That is what is actually happening. A little honesty would help in having a debate on this i…

It is clear what the Government is doing.

The truth is that what the Minister of State has put forward is some public homes on some public land with the rest of it to be used for private homes. That is what the Government is doing. To take the example of the Oscar Traynor Road site, 50% of the houses on the site will be fully private homes on the open market, a further portion will be affordable, although they will not be affordable, and 30% will be social housing. Of 500 homes in Killinarden, 100 will be fully private. We have a housing crisis in this Sta…

Can I have a simple answer, please? Is the Government committing to having zero private, open market houses built on all of the LDA sites? If that is the case, I will welcome it but I do not think it is the case and I will be very surprised if it is. That is the only way the Minister of State can say the Government will build public homes on public land. Even within the framework of the programme for Government, the Government talks about providing homes for affordable purchase through the LDA, in other words, sell…

I would like to ask the Minister about the recent increase in homelessness among single adults. The number increased by 171 nationwide between February and the end of August, with the majority, 133, in Dublin. What is the Minister's view on the causes of the increase? What action is the Government taking to deal with it?

The Minister was given five minutes to respond.

There are two issues, the first of which is the general homeless figures. I welcome that they are decreasing. That is a consequence of the eviction ban for which we have called for many years. Unfortunately, it has been largely lifted and I think we will see an increase in general homelessness as a consequence of that because evictions of those in private tenancies are the number one cause of homelessness and the number one reason for evictions is landlords selling, which will return and will drive that increase. T…