Following the publication of the Social Justice Ireland report yesterday, do the Taoiseach and the Government feel ashamed that 760,000 of our citizens are living in poverty and approximately 250,000 of them are children? This is in one of the richest countries in the world and, as the Taoiseach keeps reminding us, a country that has nearly full employment. A huge cohort of those living with their children in poverty are working. They are the working poor. This is utterly shameful. There are many contributory factors to this obscene level of poverty, including low pay, precarious work and the extortionate cost of childcare. There is no doubt that probably the major contributory factor at the moment is the obscene and unaffordable cost of housing and rent. Average housing costs nine times the average income. Rents in Dublin for a three-bedroom home average an astonishing €3,400 per month.

I will give the Taoiseach two instances of where the failure of his housing policies is directly contributing to driving people into poverty. Many working people whose incomes are slightly over the income threshold for social housing have been completely abandoned by the Government in terms of housing support. A recent report showed 20% of households pay more than 40% of their income on rent and 10% pay an incredible 60% of their income on rent. Most of them get no support from the Government. The Government will not raise the social housing income thresholds to give these people social housing support and it provides no affordable housing. There is another cohort, namely, housing assistance payment, HAP, tenants. I was shocked to discover in a response to a question to Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council this week that 70% of HAP tenants in its area make top-up payments over and above their normal council rent contribution.

Threshold has said that some 50% of HAP tenants are paying top-ups over and above their normal rent contribution, which is driving them directly into poverty. To give an example, Elaine, who has four children and an income of €1,400 per month, is paying €350 per month on top of her council rent of €182 per month. This leaves her with €900 per month for herself and her four children. There are many more examples. Does the Taoiseach accept that the failure of the Government's housing policies is directly driving families, in particular children, into poverty and deprivation? Will he commit to abandoning the failed HAP policy and guarantee in the meantime that no HAP tenants will be forced to make top-up payments that drive them into poverty? Will he raise the income thresholds for social housing supports? Will he also tell the House where the affordable housing is to be found because there is none?

I thank the Deputy. There are lots of ways in which the Government is helping people to buy their own homes. The help-to-buy scheme helps people to get a deposit by getting some of their taxes back. Some 10,000 people have availed of that scheme, which has helped them to get a deposit to buy a new home. The Rebuilding Ireland home loan has helped thousands of people to get mortgages. In addition, there are all of the actions being taken by the Government to increase housing supply. Of the 18,000 new homes built last year, one in four was social housing built by local authorities or affordable housing bodies. It is probably the first time in a long time that one in four homes built here was public housing. We will continue and intensify that in the years ahead.

The social housing income limit is under review. We acknowledge that it needs to be reviewed and increased because house prices have increased more rapidly than incomes. That work is currently being done.

I wish to come back to something the Deputy said earlier, which was not true. On the figures he used relating to poverty, what the Deputy said was very misleading. He included people who are in poverty and added to that the number of people who are at risk of poverty. Being at risk of poverty is not the same as being in poverty, which means having a low income and, as a result, suffering forms of deprivation. That is terrible and we need to reduce that and work on it every year, as every Government does. Being at risk of poverty is a relative measure related to earning 60% less than the median income. The Deputy is a bright guy who understands facts and numbers. There will always be hundreds of thousands of people who earn less than 60% of the median income. What he said, therefore, is not true. He combined the figure for those who are at risk of poverty with the figure for those in poverty and said it was poverty. That was misleading and the Deputy should not do that type of thing.

Figures from the Central Statistics Office, which nobody disputes, show that poverty rose during the recession and financial crisis but has been falling for five years. Having peaked at 12.8% in 2013, it fell to 12.7% in 2014, 11.5% in 2015, 10.9% in 2016 and 8.8% in 2017. While we do not have the 2018 figures, we anticipate that the rate has fallen again. What we see are five years of falling levels of deprivation and poverty. The questions the Deputy should have asked me are what policies the Government has brought in to make this possible and how have we succeeded in bringing down poverty levels and deprivation for the past five years. The answers are simple. The first is to do with employment. A person in employment has a 95% to 97.5% chance of not experiencing poverty. We and the Irish people have worked so hard to turn the economy around to make sure we are approaching full employment. We have increased wages. The minimum wage has increased by nearly 25% since 2011 or 2012. Wages are now going up across the economy. We have increased welfare payments of all forms for the last three budgets in a row, including weekly payments and targeted payments such as those for children in low income families and the fuel allowance. We are also bringing in subsidised and affordable childcare. We are extending school meals programmes and free GP care to more and more children. The question the Deputy should have asked is how we managed to reduce poverty every year for the past four years. That is the answer to the Deputy's question.

When I need the Taoiseach's help in formulating questions I will ask him for it. I will cite the recent Social Justice Ireland report on these so-called incorrect facts. It states that approximately 230,000 children in Ireland are living in poverty today. That is one in five children under the age of 18.

The group the Taoiseach refers to is the 110,000 people who are living in consistent poverty. There are 230,000, or a shameful one in five, children living in poverty. It is clear the Government does not feel the shame, but it should. Followed by children under 18, who form the biggest cohort of those living in poverty, the second biggest cohort, at 14%, is people who are working, also shameful. The working poor are the people who get up at 7 a.m., earn a pittance and cannot afford the cost of putting a roof over their heads. I asked the Taoiseach two specific questions. First, will the Government raise the income thresholds so that these working people can access social housing support?

Time is up, Deputy.

The Taoiseach said it is under review. It has been under review for a year.

Deputy, please your time is up.

When will the Government raise the thresholds instead of, as is currently the case, culling people from the housing lists and abandoning tens of thousands of others and failing to give them housing support?

Your time is up Deputy, please.

Second, will the Taoiseach commit to end the practice of people on HAP tenancies being forced to pay top-ups, because if they pay those top-ups, by definition, they are their children are driven into poverty?

I think the Deputy is easily one of the brightest and most intelligent Members of this House. For that reason, he should do better than to take his speaking lines from a press release, released by a campaign organisation or NGO of any sort. The official measure of poverty in Ireland is consistent poverty. The Deputy has added to that people at risk of poverty and created a definition of poverty that is not the one that is internationally accepted or the one used in this State.

That seriously is splitting hairs.

At risk of poverty is a relative measure related to the fact that there are people who earn 60% less than the median income. Unless everyone earns the same, and that could be nothing, there will always be a lot of people who earn 60% less than the median income. Consistent poverty is the official poverty rate in Ireland, recognised broadly because it is low income plus two forms of deprivation, and that has been decreasing for four years among adults and among children because of the policies of this Government. I know we need to do more but that would not be happening if we were not at least getting some things right.