Micheál Martin

That is the bottom line and yet Deputy McDonald comes in, all sound and fury. To a certain extent, there is an incredible incoherence in terms of Sinn Féin policy on housing. Deputy Ó Broin, as the Sinn Féin housing spokesperson, will meet all of the property interests. I have a list again of who he has met lately. On 30 April, Property Industry Ireland and IBEC. He meets them. Why?

For what purpose?

For what purpose? To introduce incentives for investors to capitalise apartment construction. Deputy Mary Lou McDonald comes in today and says the Government is only interested in institutional investors.

Her spokesperson has been meeting them on an ongoing basis. Such hypocrisy.

Such hypocrisy will not cut it with the people. The bottom line is this. This is a balanced set of proposals.

The Housing Agency report as published had four options. The Government has gone with the option of adapting the existing RPZs because they would expire by the end of the year if nothing was done. This is a strong measure in terms of protection but also in terms of new builds. We need to incentivise future investment in new apartment buildings and housing. I put it to the Deputy that the State is …

Is anybody seriously suggesting that the State will pony up the €20 billion? Sinn Féin says it will triple social housing, triple this and that without telling us how we are going to get the money. This is very fundamental. We need public sector investment-----

We also need private sector investment and we need to protect tenants. The Minister, Deputy Browne, has done that today with his package. It is extremely disappointing to Sinn Féin because it is not what the party thought it would be.

Sinn Féin never anticipated that we would end no-fault evictions by landlords with four tenancies. It never anticipated that we would make it a national protection framework because last March the party declared to all and sundry that the Government was getting rid of it completely.

That is the language they used. It is the language of "exaggerate and exaggerate, tell untruth after untruth and you know what, people might believe us".

"People might believe us";-----

-----that is what Sinn Féin is about. What I am about is solutions.

I am about solutions.

Sinn Féin is about exploiting the housing problem and crisis to whatever degree possible for its own political advantage.

The Government wants to increase the supply of houses to get to 50,000 per annum.

The proposals of Sinn Féin, via rent bans or whatever the Deputy has said, would actually reduce supply. The Deputies opposite have no ideas and no solutions. That is their problem and the people saw that last time out. They do not have solutions because they do not accept there is any role for the market at all.

That is a fundamental problem in terms of their presentation on this issue.

I stress again that existing tenants' rent will be capped at 2%-----

-----and the rent of new tenants in new supply will be capped at the CPI level. The caps are retained. The framework-----

I did not interrupt the Deputy but this is standard practice for Sinn Féin-----

-----because Sinn Féin is interested in just throwing untruth after untruth across the House and is not prepared to listen to the truth.

You are not the leader yet, Deputy.

You are not the leader.

The Deputies opposite are into performance; they are not into substance.

There are two things. First, Fianna Fáil has been in government for five years, not ten. That is a fact. Second, Deputy Bacik said people were briefing at the end of February. They were not briefing. What happened was that I went public and said there would be reform and that there would have to be change. I made a general statement saying that we would have to attract private sector investment. A…