Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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In November six years ago a referendum was put to the people about children. We were told it was historic and that its aim was to establish a child-centred approach to protecting all children. Another aim was to support families who were struggling rather than allow crisis situations to develop. Part of Article 42A inserted in the Constitution recognises that all children have rights and pledges to uphold those rights by law. On the ground, however, that admirable intent has not been achieved six years later. The assessment of needs for children with disabilities is not being provided. The Disability Act 2005 provides that an assessment should be carried out within three months of it being requested, but the latest figures supplied to my colleague, Deputy Murphy O'Mahony, and to RTÉ news illustrate that there are more than 3,850 children with suspected disabilities who have still not had an assessment.

The Minister of State at the Department of Health, Deputy Finian McGrath, announced in 2016 that 128 disability care teams would be put in place and that they would resolve the waiting times. In 2018 there are only 56 such teams in place and, in fact, the waiting lists have grown longer. There are 37,229 people in the country on speech and language therapy waiting lists. Some 15,000 of them are waiting for the crucial first assessment. A further 7,894 are waiting for their first treatment and 14,300 are waiting for further therapy. Separately, there are 31,000 people waiting for occupational therapy and over half of these, more than 16,800, are children who await a first assessment. More than 6,000 of that 16,800 have been waiting longer than one year for the crucial first assessment.

As one can imagine, this is causing huge frustration, anger and worry for parents and families. Where is the child-centred approach promised in 2012? For those who can afford it, they are paying hundreds of euro just to get a diagnosis. Even in the public system, there are inconsistencies in the treatment across the country, when one can get it. How can the Government stand over this inaction and lack of delivery in any improvement of waiting times for assessments under the Disability Act 2005? Does the Taoiseach believe this situation is defensible and acceptable and what plans does he, as Taoiseach, have in place to ensure these waiting lists are prioritised?

Seán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Ceann Comhairle)
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Fáilte romhat ar ais.

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Ceann Comhairle. First, I am very proud and pleased to have been a member of a party, and of a Government, that enshrined children's rights in our Constitution, and did so for the first time. In the years since then, we have been doing everything we can to realise those rights and to make them real in our laws and society and not just in the words in our Constitution. Taking the area of education, for example, children going to school this September are in classrooms with the lowest ever pupil-teacher ratio.

Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail)
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That has nothing to do with the referendum.

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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A record €10 billion is being invested in education this year. In the health area, children with profound disabilities, 40,000 of whom are in receipt of the domiciliary care allowance, DCA, now have a medical card as of right. They do not have to be means-tested based on their parents' income. When the party opposite was in power children, even though they had profound disabilities, were not provided with free healthcare or medical cards because their parents were working, or had an average, or in some cases below average, income. We have changed that. We have also brought in free GP care for the under sixes. In the area of the Ministry of children, a dedicated Ministry set up in recent years, we have brought in two years of free preschool, giving children early childhood education which is so beneficial for them.

In the last year or so, we brought in subsidised childcare, reducing the cost of childcare for lots of parents around the country. We all know the enormous burden that childcare costs are on families. Those subsidies help to make a difference and we propose to continue them in the years ahead. Also, in terms of leave for parents in order that they can spend more time with their children, we brought in paid paternity benefit for the first time. I appreciate there are areas where there are still enormous difficulties and areas where more work needs to be done.

In regard to the assessments under the Disability Act 2005, to which the Deputy referred, the number of applications has risen steadily since it it was enacted. There were 1,138 applications in 2007. However, in 2017, there were 5,839 applications, such that in the space of ten years, there was an almost five-fold increase in the number of applications. The system is struggling to deal with this level of demand. There is a new standing operating procedure for the assessment of need but it has been delayed due to necessary discussions and consultations with the professional bodies. This process is now entering its final stages and we hope that if we can get it agreed it will make a real difference. Also, efforts to progress the establishment of disability network teams around the country have been delayed as well, due to deliberations with Fórsa and with voluntary providers on the appointment of managers of these teams but an agreement has now been made and this will allow recruitment to start in the next month for some of the community healthcare organisations.

Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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Does the Taoiseach get it? Does he get what it is like for parents and children who are waiting on those lists? The Taoiseach spoke about standard operating procedures and new rules for the disabilities assessment. Does he actually get what it is like to be on a waiting on a list for over a year, 7,000 of them for an initial occupational therapy, OT, assessment? Does he get what it is like to be one of the 15,000 children waiting for a first assessment for speech and language therapy? Early intervention is crucial and key to getting a positive pathway in this regard. The Taoiseach speaks of standard operating procedures and technical matters. He does not get what it is like for parents and children in this situation.

The Minister of State with responsibility for disabilities, who is known for leaking from Cabinet meetings, is the captain of the disability ship in this country and he is not delivering. As long as he remains captain of that ship, that ship is the Titanic. It is time that the Taoiseach took charge and gave some hope to the the 37,000 children waiting for speech and language therapy and to the 31,000 waiting for occupation therapy, OT. He needs to stop talking about standard operating procedures and to start talking about people.

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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Of course I get it and everyone on this side of the House gets it. The Deputy and his party do not have a monopoly on either empathy or compassion.

Timmy Dooley (Clare, Fianna Fail)
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Lots of empathy but no delivery.

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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All of us do constituency work and all of us have friends and family. All of us are aware of plenty of individual cases on which all of us work hard to try to get results for parents. Instead of coming in here trying to pretend that somehow he has a monopoly on understanding or a greater empathy or compassion than people on this side of the House, the Deputy could come in here with solutions-----

Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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The National Treatment Purchase Fund, NTPF.

Finian McGrath (Dublin Bay North, Independent)
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Childish comments.

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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-----but he did not do that in either of his contributions. The Minister of State, Deputy Finian McGrath, is working extremely hard on this. There is a large budget of €1.8 billion for disabilities. As I mentioned, we are putting in the procedures and recruiting the extra staff we need.

Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)
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By every measure, the Taoiseach's Government is failing to tackle the national scandal that is the housing emergency. Private rents and house prices continue to spiral out of control. Social housing output remains glacial with fewer real council houses to be delivered this year than last year. Not a single affordable home to rent or buy has been delivered by Government over the past three years. An entire generation of young people, unlike their parents before them, face the prospect of never owning their own home.

Since the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, assumed office, homelessness has reached unprecedented levels. Tonight almost 4,000 children will sleep in emergency accommodation and all the while the Taoiseach persists with a plan that is not only failing but is, in fact, making things worse. People know that and they are justifiably angry. That is why thousands of people demonstrated at the Take Back the City rally in Dublin last weekend. That is just a glimpse of that anger. The Irish Congress of Trade Unions' Raise the Roof demonstration on 3 October will amplify that message all the more loudly.

Yet the Taoiseach and the Minister blame everyone but themselves for their failure to address the underlying issue, namely, a lack of homes. They have blamed local authorities, local councillors and opposition Deputies and I heard the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, on RTÉ radio this morning explaining away his deplorable record by saying that the numbers of people in homelessness are going up because people keep on presenting to emergency accommodation. I want to know if the Minister is now blaming the homeless for being homeless because the buck stops with him. Both the Minister and the Taoiseach are responsible but their plan is not working.

The Minister claims that Sinn Féin has not offered solutions but we have offered ample solutions. We have offered solutions around investment in social and affordable housing, the introduction of a temporary tax relief for renters, alongside a rent freeze, the introduction of legislation to prevent buy-to-let landlords from seeking vacant possessions and the proposal to introduce legislation requiring local authorities to offer assistance to those at risk of losing their homes or tenancies. These are alternatives - take them and use them. Listen to the NGOs, listen to the approved housing bodies and take their alternatives and use them. It is not that no one has offered solutions; it is that the Taoiseach and the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, have refused to act and to listen. True to form, their friends in Fianna Fáil bury their heads in the sand as well.

Timmy Dooley (Clare, Fianna Fail)
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The Deputy did a fair bit of burying herself.

Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)
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They will snipe from the ditches about a lack of housing but what will they do tonight when faced with an opportunity to vote? The answer to that is that they will do absolutely nothing.

Seán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Ceann Comhairle)
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Does the Deputy have a question?

Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)
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We need bold, meaningful action and we need real leadership. We need a new plan and we need a new Minister so is it not time that the Taoiseach dismissed the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Deputy Eoghan Murphy? He is quite happy to hang the prospect of dismissal over the Minister of State, Deputy Catherine Byrne, for refusing to state her confidence in the Minister but would it not be more productive and appropriate to sack the Minister for not doing his job?

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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I, as Taoiseach, and everyone in this House understands the depth of the housing crisis, whether for a generation of people who are renting, who want to buy but struggle to put together a deposit or find a property to buy or for people waiting years for council houses or for people who have to spend time in emergency accommodation. I agree with Deputy McDonald on one point, which is that the underlying problem is a lack of housing supply. We have a country that has a growing population. The population grew by more than 60,000 people last year through natural increases and inward migration and as a result of Irish people who had left coming home. When the population increases by about 60,000 a year it stands to reason that we need to build many new homes every year, probably about 30,000 to 35,000, and we are not doing that yet. If it were possible to ramp up house building overnight with a soundbite-----

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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It has been seven years.

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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-----a speech or a single item of legislation, we would of course do that. It has not been seven years.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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It is seven years.

Seán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Ceann Comhairle)
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Order, please.

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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Let us not forget that of those seven years we spent the first four rescuing the country, taking it back from the brink, putting our public finances back in order-----

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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Slashing expenditure on public housing.

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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-----and getting people back to work. We were opposed at every step along the way by Sinn Féin.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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For cutting funding on housing.

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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The first four of those seven years at least were spent putting this country back in a position where we could afford to invest in housing, infrastructure, healthcare and transport again. We are now in that position. It is not possible to ramp these things up overnight. No number of soundbites, easy solutions or one-line amendments will do anything like that.

Timmy Dooley (Clare, Fianna Fail)
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The Taoiseach is discovering that himself. The soundbite king.

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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This is the kind of progress that is being made. New building is picking up. People can see that now all around the country particularly in the city of Dublin.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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It is not affordable housing. It is €340,000. Student accommodation is €1,000 a month. The Taoiseach is embarrassing himself.

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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There were 14,000 new homes built last year and behind that number there are 14,000 individuals and families who moved into a new home last year, a new house or new apartment, and in many cases freed up other properties for other people to live in. That was a 50% increase on the year before. We estimate that this year, approximately 20,000 new homes will be built, particularly if one includes vacant homes brought back into use and student accommodation. We estimate that by 2020 we will be up to around 25,000 and 30,000 after that. Anybody who thinks there is some way to speed that up dramatically is engaging in dishonest thinking.

We also brought in the rent pressure zones to reduce the rising rents.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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There has been a 7% increase in Dublin in 12 months despite a 4% cap.

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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We had double-digit increases in those zones before the rent pressure zones were brought in. That is not the case now.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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It is 7% in 4% cap zones.

Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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Sinn Féin supported 4%.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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Surely the Taoiseach can add.

Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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Sinn Féin supported them.

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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The old tactics of Sinn Féin have not changed. Their tactics are just to shout us down.

Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)
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You poor pet.

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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They do not like to hear the truth. They do not like to hear the facts. They do not like to hear real statistics. They just shout us down.

Seán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Ceann Comhairle)
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The Taoiseach's time is up. All Members are entitled to ask their questions in silence and the Taoiseach is entitled to the courtesy of being allowed to respond. This is a democratic forum. There are people sitting in their homes watching how we transact our business.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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If they have homes.

Seán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Ceann Comhairle)
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Could we please transact our business with a little bit of decorum?

Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)
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I can only surmise that the Taoiseach is delusional. It is the only conclusion I can arrive at. He seems to believe that everything is okay and that he is on track despite the facts. It is not opinion or speculation but a fact that homelessness has risen and that house prices and rents are out of control and beyond the reach even of people at work. The Taoiseach seems to be entirely immune to the fact that people are now taking to the streets and taking direct action to give voice to the anger and desperation they feel. The Government's plans are not working. The Minister has failed and is failing in his duty to the tens of thousands of people on housing lists and to the 10,000 people who are homeless. He is failing the children I referred to earlier who will sleep tonight and the next night and the night after that in emergency accommodation.

We make no claim to have a monopoly on empathy but on these benches we have plenty of exposure to those families and their very real and desperate experiences yet the Government is immune to them. The Taoiseach is delusional because he stands up as Head of Government and claims his plan is working and Fianna Fáil assists the Government in that regard.

The Taoiseach has failed, his Minister is failing and the desperate people with real stories who came out at the weekend want an answer from the Taoiseach and they want somebody held to account. I suggest to the Taoiseach that the person to be held to account in the first instance is the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Deputy Eoghan Murphy.

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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We all know what this is about. The Dáil is back, Sinn Féin is looking to score some political points so it puts down a motion that is just pure politics.

Denise Mitchell (Dublin Bay North, Sinn Fein)
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The Taoiseach should stick to facts. He should stick to the families.

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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A motion that is just pure politics, tactical, cynical, personalised and ineffective.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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It is not personalised at all.

Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire (Cork South Central, Sinn Fein)
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It is not talking about the Taoiseach.

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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There is one thing that is absolutely certain: the Sinn Féin motion that has been put down for tonight, if passed, will not house a single person nor will it help us to build houses any more quickly than we are already doing.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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It might force the Government to change its course.

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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This is all we have from Sinn Féin, oppositional politics, cynical politics, personalised politics. It does not really care about people who are homeless, about people on the housing list or young couples struggling to buy for the first time. That is why it has put forward no solutions. When it puts forward solutions they are solutions that do not work.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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Policy after policy, budget after budget, the Minister has received more policy documents from us than he has had-----

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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All over the country when they can help, their councillors vote down social housing proposals.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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Never once has Sinn Féin voted down social housing in this city. Never once.

Seán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Ceann Comhairle)
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Deputy please.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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The Taoiseach cannot lie in the Chamber. Sinn Féin has not voted down social housing. Councillors from the Taoiseach's party have.

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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Whether in South Dublin, whether in the north inner city, whether it is putting up property tax to reduce funding for homeless services this is the truth of Sinn Féin.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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The Taoiseach is lying in the Chamber.

Colm Brophy (Dublin South West, Fine Gael)
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Sinn Féin councillors voted against it.

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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Once again the Sinn Féin benches demonstrate that the truth hurts.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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The Taoiseach is misleading the House. He is knowingly misleading the House.

Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent)
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It looks like spin rather than substance remains the order of the day when it comes to the Government's housing policy. I have built plenty of apartments and houses and it does not take seven and a half years to build them.

Timmy Dooley (Clare, Fianna Fail)
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How is that working out for you Mick?

Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent)
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I have been here since 2011 and things have got worse since then. The one consistency I have seen in the Government's policy in all that time is that it is wedded to the philosophy that the markets will fix it. I have news for the Taoiseach: the markets will not fix it. They do not want to fix it, they actually like it the way it is.

The Government's latest inspiration is the Land Development Agency. The Taoiseach described it as radical. It is the opposite of radical. It is not the ESB or Aer Lingus. It promises to be crony capitalism at its finest. This is the National Asset Management Agency, NAMA, mark 2, exactly what we do not need. It is soul destroying that the Government would appoint a former NAMA individual as chief executive officer. That is like getting the fox to mind the chickens.

I will give an example of how crony capitalism works in this country. Avestus is an Irish asset management company which has decided it would like to build residential property. The four directors of Avestus were in NAMA. They had directors' loans worth €350 million. In 2012 NAMA decided to sell the loans to a company registered in Luxembourg for €26 million, a 92% discount. Last week it emerged the Luxembourg company and Avestus share a director, in breach of the NAMA Act 2009. One could not make it up but it gets worse. Avestus has received €25 million from the Irish Strategic Investment Fund, ISIF, to develop. We literally allowed this company to buy its loans back for peanuts and now we are funding it to build. Can it be true that the Government wants to use the expertise in NAMA for the Land Development Agency? It wants to do deals with developers to build out State land while they sit on their own land. This is nuts. The developer is looking for a profit margin in the region of €80,000 a unit. Why would the Government want to put money in the developer's pocket? Why did NAMA want to do it? NAMA is funding Gannon Homes to build three-bed semi-detached houses in Millers Glen in Swords. Prices start at €365,000. The Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government says that is affordable, but affordable for who?

The Government says the Land Development Agency will put downward pressure on land prices. How will it do that? Can the Taoiseach explain that to me? What will put downward pressure on land prices is a 25% tax on land-banking and I hope the Government allows the legislation for that to go through the House with a bit of speed rather than let it collect dust. As for the State land, if the Taoiseach thinks the local authorities are not fit for purpose to supply housing why does the Government not strengthen the local authorities and make them fit for purpose, give them the necessary skilled personnel and let them hire builders, not developers, to build housing that is 100% affordable not 30% and 10%? Why should we allow State land be used to provide a minimum of 60% at a price that is unaffordable to most people? Will the Taoiseach explain why we would do that?

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Deputy. Deputy Wallace spoke once again about spin over substance. If he wants substance, here it is. There were 14,000 new homes built last year, which is 50% more than the year before. This year 20,000 new homes will be built. That is a significant number of new homes being built in this country for people and families to live in. These are real homes with front doors, brick walls, windows and gardens. It is not spin. They are there. There is some evidence that house prices are starting to level off. Rent increases have gone from double digit increases to 1% or 1.1% in the last two quarters. In the last year 5,000 families were taken out of homelessness. Rough sleeping is also down by 40%. These are real numbers and there are real facts and real people behind all of those, and real substance. I am not pretending for a second that there is not much more that needs to be done or that we have got on top of this issue. I am not claiming that but I am giving real factual examples of the progress that has been made.

It is not the view of this Government that the market will fix it. That is a charge made against us by our opponents but it is not the case. If we believe that the market on its own could fix the problems in our housing sector we would not be investing in 110,000 new public homes. That is what is there. It is in Rebuilding Ireland and Project Ireland 2040. It is a substantial public housing building programme with 110,000 public homes to be built over the next ten years. Last year 7,000 houses were already added to the stock and that will rise to 10,000 in the years ahead. That is where we think it needs to be, at about 10,000 new homes being built every year by the public sector. If we believed the charges of Deputy Wallace, that the private sector had all of the solutions, we certainly would not be implementing a policy like that. We also have the Land Development Agency which is designed to operate like a semi-State such as An Post, the ESB or Telecom Éireann in the past. It has a commercial mandate but its primary principle is not to make a profit. It is to deliver necessary infrastructure and services for people and to break even and that is the way it is going to work. It will be a public developer developing publically owned lands for a mix of housing - social, affordable and private housing for people to buy.

Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent)
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I do not know who give the Taoiseach his figures. I am not saying it is his fault but there is so much spin in there that it is not funny. The housing supply co-ordination task force, which checks out completions in the four Dublin local authorities for ten units or more, gave a total number of 1,095 for the first two quarters of 2017. For the first two quarters of 2018 the number is 397. Those are hundreds and not thousands - 397. In 2017, 394 local authority houses built in the whole country. Approved housing bodies built 270. That is 664. The Taoiseach is telling me that the figures for Dublin for the first two quarters of this year are private and social. He telling me that there will be 20,000 new houses built this year. That will not happen. There is not a prayer in Hell of that happening. It is not possible. It will not even get close to it.

Seán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Ceann Comhairle)
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I thank the Deputy.

Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent)
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The Government is buying and acquiring houses and even over half of the Part V's were not built. They were purchased. The Government is massaging the figures no end. When the Government buys something that does nothing for the housing supply. Even if it is used for HAP, the Government is eating into the private sector of it. I ask the Taoiseach please to listen. It is hard for him to be on top of every section of the Government and I do not expect him to be. I am, however, convinced that he is listening to the wrong people. The Government is not fixing the problem. It is actually getting worse.

Seán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Ceann Comhairle)
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Deputy Wallace's time is up.

Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent)
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The Government needs to change tack.

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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The figures for new home builds come from the Central Statistics Office, CSO, the independent body that collects numbers and does statistics for the State. I do think anyone disputes the accuracy of the CSO. It is the organisation that does the census and produces the employment figures every quarter. It is an independent body trusted to produce statistics. The figures for rent come from the Residential Tenancies Board, RTB, and the Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI. I appreciate that other figures come from a property website which is a private sector entity.

The official figures come from the ESRI and the RTB. The CSO figures show that in the last quarter some 4,400 new homes were built in Ireland. We are on track to build approximately 18,000 new houses and apartments this year. When vacant homes being brought back into use and student accommodation are added the figure will increase to more than 20,000. It will increase to 25,000 the year after.