This is a landlord's government, the Labour spokesman on the environment, Mr Eamon Gilmore, accused the Minister of State in the Department of the Environment, Mr Bobby Molloy, during question time.
"More people have been evicted from their houses since the time of Michael Davitt," he said.
This was the first Government for years that had taken any action to assist tenants, the Minister replied. The Government had "taken a major step" to implement the recommendations of the commission on the private-rented residential sector.
"It was announced that an ad hoc board would be ready for the autumn, and it will."
Mr Gilmore said the measures in the report of the commission, published a year ago - intended to benefit the country's 150,000 tenants - would not be implemented until next year. "The measures in the report that benefit the landlords have already been implemented in the Finance Act."
Mr Molloy said arrangements were in hand to establish the board as soon as everything was in place. "To give the impression that the Government and I are trying to slow down the implementation of the announced proposals which resulted from a commission that we established, is ludicrous." A total of 39,176 families were in need of local authority housing, on the basis of a statutory assessment conducted at the end of March 1999, the Minister said. The next statutory assessment was due in March 2002.
Mr Gilmore said 50,000 applicants sought social or public housing "of some form" in the 1999 survey. On that basis there were now almost 60,000 families on local authority waiting lists - the highest number since the 1930s.
In "boom economic times" there was a huge demand for housing in the public and private sectors, said the Minister, and "enormous amounts of Exchequer funds" had gone towards providing infrastructure for houses.
The Government had made a "dog's dinner" of the entire housing market, said the Fine Gael spokeswoman on housing and local government, Ms Olivia Mitchell. Banks were now advertising to encourage parents and grandparents "to mortgage their nursing home money" to buy houses for their children and grandchildren.