The half-baked measures announced this week, which the Government optimistically referred to as a “safety net”, will be of little assistance. Regrettably, the safety net is as threadbare and flimsy as the Government’s housing commitments.

Surely, the minimum requirement of a safety net for renters should include a roof over their heads. The Government can’t even guarantee that. Emergency accommodation in many areas is simply unavailable.

One of the Government’s measures, a requirement that landlords give tenants the first right of refusal when rental properties are being sold, has no supporting legislation. We have no idea when, or even if, that legislation will be enacted.

Separately, approved housing bodies (AHBs) will be empowered to buy private rental accommodation if a tenant is at risk of homelessness, and create cost-rental agreements. AHBs were not consulted before this announcement and there is total confusion over how it would operate.

The Government also recycled a previous commitment to increase the number of tenant-in-situ purchases this year to 1,500. The reality is take-up of that scheme has been painfully low. In Dublin City Council, for example, just 25 homes have been bought – despite the scheme being up and running for the past year.

Crucially, there is nothing in the Government’s announcement that deals with the most important issue – the critical lack of affordable supply of homes to rent and to buy. The Government will lift the ban next week, despite having done no serious planning for what comes next.

A regular criticism thrown at the opposition is we are quick to criticise and slow to offer solutions. This charge is routinely levelled by the Taoiseach, who appears to think the opposition is more culpable than the Government for the housing disaster. Allow me to help him out now, given his Government appears to be out of ideas.

According to the most recent Daft.ie report, there were just over 1,000 properties available to rent across the entire country in February. In Dublin, average rental costs are now more than €2,300 a month while the figure is more than €1,700 elsewhere in the country. Ordinary workers and families cannot afford these rack rents.

As the supply of long-term rental accommodation has dwindled to a historic low, the supply of short-term lets is surging. Across the country, there are more than 16,000 entire properties available to rent on Airbnb. In Dublin alone, there are more than 3,700 such properties.

The Government first promised to regulate short-term lets in 2019, when it introduced a requirement for planning permission to be obtained in rent pressure zones. The maximum fine for non-compliance with these rules is €5,000, with the potential for daily fines of up to €1,500.

Sounds robust, doesn’t it? Look a bit deeper, and the notion there is any regulation of this sector quickly evaporates. In January, it was reported only 142 planning applications had been submitted to local authorities in the past three years and just 50 granted.

Property owners can ignore the rules because there is no enforcement. A notional fine of €1,500 a day sounds like a severe sanction. But when there is no enforcement, and zero chance of being caught, the idea of fines quickly becomes tokenistic.

We should not have children growing up in hotels and tourists in homes. An immediate crackdown of the short-term letting sector is required so rental properties in breach of the rules return to the long-term rental market. This requires the Government to do something it has never done. Resource local authorities to enforce its own laws.

Another obvious way to quickly free up more homes is to target the tens of thousands of vacant properties all over the country, many of which are creating eyesores on main streets in towns and villages.

Fine Gael first promised to introduce a vacant homes tax in 2017. Six years later, it is finally being introduced. Problem solved? Unfortunately not. The tax has been set at a derisory 0.3pc of the value of a home. This means sitting on an empty property, increasing in value every year by multiples of that figure, is still an attractive prospect.

It is immoral to sit on vacant homes during a housing crisis and the State will not tolerate it. If the Government wants vacant homes to come back into use, it must introduce a punitive vacant homes tax that sends that message. The Social Democrats have proposed a 10pc tax on vacant homes. This could be introduced tomorrow.

A core part of the solution to this crisis is to radically increase the supply of social, cost-rental and affordable homes. Decades ago, when the country was broke, we managed to build tens of thousands of public homes. There’s no reason we can’t do that now.

An immediate first step is to boost the powers of state bodies to compulsorily purchase land; increase the number of construction workers by reforming apprenticeship schemes; make much better use of modular homes; increase staffing numbers at An Bord Pleanála to deal with backlogs; introduce penalties for developers who sit on planning permissions to boost land values and impose a windfall tax on profits when rezoned land is sold for huge private profit.

The Government is not an innocent bystander in this, watching the housing disaster unfold in slow motion. It has the power, and resources, to take action now to save people from homelessness. One of those powers is the extension of the eviction ban.

It is not a silver bullet. It will not work if done in isolation – the Government approach for the past six months. But, it is an essential element to buy some time to allow the Government finally wage an all-out war on this crisis.​

Holly Cairns is leader of the Social Democrats.