Yesterday the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, in response to the publication of the latest quarterly report from daft.ie said that rents are rising at a slow rate. Meanwhile in the real world, average rents are in excess of €1,300 across the State, an increase of 8% on the same time last year, and average rents stand in Dublin at over €2,000, a situation that is scandalous.

Ten counties in the latest Daft report showed double-digit rent increases, including Waterford, a rise of 16%, and Galway, an incredible rise of almost 17%. All counties bar Dublin saw rent inflation of at least double the rent pressure zone cap, while Dublin rents rose by 7%. The Minister is at best being disingenuous but in reality is being deliberately misleading.

I thank the Deputy. The time is up.

In fact, the rent pressure zone legislation is doing nothing for renters - that is the fact - who are facing rents of between €1,300 and €2,200 on new homes.

The time is up.

It is clear that we need new measures that will work. What we need immediately is a rent freeze. I am asking if the Taoiseach will finally accept that his plans have failed and act definitively to protect renters.

I thank the Deputy for the question. I am afraid it is Sinn Féin which is misleading the public on this issue. We know rents are unacceptably high. That is why last week we prioritised in this House legislation that will extend rent pressure zones and rent caps in time but also in geography, that will take away important loopholes that people were abusing, and will for the first time bring in large institutional landlords under rent pressure zones where they were not beforehand.

It is disingenuous of the Deputy to state that rent pressure zones are not working and at the same time support me in extending and improving them. While the Deputy thinks it might be easy to call for a rent freeze, we know from other jurisdictions that while a rent freeze will freeze rents, it will also freeze supply. We have a supply problem in the rent sector, and that is what we are working to address through Rebuilding Ireland. As we fix that supply problem, we are bringing in all these important measures to protect tenants who cannot meet the rents today.

The Minister is not protecting them.

That is what we are doing. We will finish that work in the House this week.