I am sure the Taoiseach will agree that the latest daft.ie rental report makes for very serious and depressing reading, revealing very high rents across the country. The average rent now stands at €1,400 per month. It has been going up continuously for nine years. Alarmingly, economist, Ronan Lyons is warning that the market could face another ten years of high rents and rent misery if the Government continues to settle for a system that depends on the likes of cuckoo funds to prop up the rental market. Meanwhile, Threshold is warning that the continuing high rents are forcing more and more people into homelessness and many more are under the threat of homelessness. Alarmingly, across the country there are only approximately 3,500 homes available for rent. In Dublin 8, rents have gone up 125% over nine years.

We all have to agree that rents have been at an unaffordable level for many years. In Cork the average rent is €1,372; in Galway, €1,300; and in Limerick, €1,219. All of this should act as a catalyst for fundamental change in housing policy. In particular, younger people have been failed badly by current policies. A young person today is finding it impossible to pay these rents. Young couples, in particular, are finding it impossible to save deposits while paying exorbitant rents in tandem with credit constraints. Clearly, the rent controls in place are not working, contrary to what the Minister said in the Dáil last month. The various solutions with which the Government has come up have not been effective or had an impact.

Local authority income eligibility thresholds to qualify for a local authority house are very low. Accordingly, thousands of people on relatively modest incomes are trapped in this high rent misery. It is time for the Government to consider imposing a rent freeze, given the exorbitant levels of rent people are facing. Will the Taoiseach accept that it will be another ten years of misery, according to the comments of the economist Ronan Lyons this morning? Will he accept that current policies are simply not working and that, in particular, a whole generation of young people have been failed and can never look forward to the prospect of owning their own home, which is their wish?

I acknowledge that rents relative to incomes are high, which is a real problem. They have become unaffordable for many, particularly those living in cities. In the Government’s view, the solution is twofold, namely, rent controls and an increase in housing supply. Rent controls which are in place mean that for an existing tenancy, the rent cannot be increased in any given year by more than 4%. As the Deputy knows, the statistics produced today by daft.ie do not capture this but only new tenancies. Rent controls, with a maximum rent increase of 4% a year, are working for hundreds of thousands of people who are staying in the same place they have been renting in the medium to long term. If it had not been for these rent controls, these hundreds of thousands of people would have faced high rent increases by now. That is not captured in the statistics, as Assistant Professor Lyons said, because these are new tenancies and the statistics do not apply to existing tenancies.

The second aspect of the solution has to be more supply. If there was more supply of social housing, it would ensure people could move out of private rented accommodation, the housing assistance payment and rent supplement into social housing. We will provide an extra 10,000 social houses this year, more than in any other year this century. We will ramp up that figure to 11,000 units the following year and 12,000 the year after that. It is the biggest social housing programme in many decades.

There will also be an increase in the supply of private housing, with more places for people to buy to ensure they will not have to rent anymore. This will free up properties for others to rent and ensure more places to rent.

I am pleased that another set of statistics was out yesterday which showed a significant increase in the supply of housing. In the year to September, there was a 28% increase in the number of commencement notices. There had been concerns that the number was slowing down. We know from the numbers that were out yesterday that that is not the case. There has been a 28% increase year on year in the number of commencement notices.

They are just commencement notices.

Behind that, we see a 31% increase in the number of planning permissions. There have been commencement notices for 26,000 new homes in the past year, while planning permission has been granted for 31,000 right behind them. We see a strong pipeline of new housing. This covers social housing for people on housing lists and private housing for people to buy and rent. Fundamentally that is the solution and we can now see that it is working.

Deputy Micheál Martin quoted Assistant Professor Lyons, but I am not sure he was quoting from the actual report which I have here.

In it, he states, in big writing, showing that he believes this is the most important point:

It looks as though Ireland's longest-ever run of increasing rental prices may soon come to an end. Nationally, inflation in the private rental market - as measured by the Daft.ie Report - has fallen from over 12% in mid-2018 to 5.2% in the third quarter of 2019.

Dublin is driving this. Over the same period, inflation in the capital has fallen from 13.4% [his words] to just 3.9%. In four of the city's 25 markets - Dublin 1, Dublin 2, Dublin 4 and Dublin 20 - the inflation rate is now less than 2%. ... This is the first time since early 2013 that this has been the case.

That is nothing to boast about.

That is the report.

We have had rent increases for the past 14 quarters. In 1987, a young couple would have had to pay 19% of their net annual earnings to afford a home. In 2014 - five years ago - it was 30%. In terms of a deposit in 1987, a young couple would have had to pay 30% of their net annual earnings. This increased to 50% by 2014. God knows what it is now. If the Taoiseach were to go out and talk to people, he would know this is the big issue. Young people are very angry and their parents are very angry. When one knocks on doors one is told by parents there are five or seven people living in the house because their adult children cannot afford to rent. There are as many people living in local authority houses. In the words of Threshold, high rents have forced people into homelessness. Instead of going on the streets or into emergency accommodation, many people are going back to live with their families. That is the reality.

We now have the lowest level of home ownership in this country in many a year. The reason for this is the Government's big policy mistake of going for the rental model. Fine Gael went for a rental model, thinking the private market would resolve the issue but it has not. These figures are extremely worrying. The prediction of another ten years' of rent misery for young people and young couples demands a dramatic change in scale of response in terms of house building and a rent freeze.

There is something a little bit odd about the Deputy referring back to 1987 or 1997. I am not sure which year he mentioned, but whichever year he chose was an interesting year to reference because he did not mention the 20 years of Fianna Fáil government that occurred after that period. During that period of government, Fianna Fáil was responsible for many of the policies that gave rise to the housing crisis and housing shortage that we face today.

The Deputy likes to pretend that he was only elected to the Dáil in 2011 or 2017 but he was part of the Government that was in power for almost all of that period or a large part of it.

I am speaking about the young people and the plight facing young people today.

If the Deputy wants to talk about young people, let us talk about young people.

The Taoiseach is oblivious to them.

Many of them are living in Australia.

Let us talk about those young people. Since this Government of Fine Gael and the Independent Alliance has come into office we have introduced the help-to-buy scheme. That help-to-buy scheme-----

How many houses?

-----has ensured that 15,000 young people and young couples have been able to raise a deposit to buy their first home.

The Government wanted to abolish it.

That has happened because of decisions taken by this Government to support and help first-time buyers and supply is now coming on stream. According to the figures released yesterday, 28,000 new homes commenced in the past year, up significantly on the figure for last year, and 35,000 planning permissions were granted in the past year-----

Planning permissions mean nothing.

-----and a good pipeline being granted behind that.

They cannot sell the houses in Rathfarnham.

The Deputy mentioned the daft.ie report and said there were 3,500 properties available for rent on that particular website. According to the website's own report, that is 10% more than this time last year.

Can you all calm down, please? Let us have a little calm and a little order. I call Deputy Ó Laoghaire.