There is a daft.ie report out today. For the 14th quarter in a row, average rents have risen. The average rent in Cork is now €1,372 per month. In Dublin, it is over €2,000 per month. This rental crisis - and it is beyond question a crisis - is crushing workers and families. It is costing people €2,000 per month, which equates to €24,000 per annum, to put a roof over their heads, not to mind the cost of food, insurance or sending children to school.

It is the same story in Galway, Limerick, Waterford and anywhere else in the State. There are sky-high rents and no action. The figures do not lie. They are crippling people entirely. While they are shocking, they are more than just figures. They are the mother with two kids facing homelessness because her landlord has just hiked her rent. They are the young people desperately rifling through daft.ie just to find anything remotely affordable within commuting distance of their work. They are the couples who have no chance of saving up for a deposit on their own home. A whole generation is being locked out of ever having any option of having a permanent home. People have lost hope of that. Thousands of people pay rent that in reality they cannot afford. Inevitably, other things suffer. Hard decisions are made on what bills to pay and what a family can afford to let kids participate in. People dread trying to shop for decent food on a pathetic budget.

Renters in Cork and throughout the State have been badly let down by the Fine Gael-Fianna Fáil partnership Government. They have done nothing to reduce the cost of rents or to protect tenants from further rent increases. It just goes on and on. As has been noted, the reality is this is pushing more and more families closer to homelessness. There are 5,000 households on the public housing waiting list in Cork city. Homelessness figures in Cork reached 435 at the end of September. Rents in Cork city reached an all-time high, with renters having to spend 47% more than mortgage holders to live in a three-bed house. The Fine Gael-Fianna Fáil housing policy is not working. It is failing Cork and it is failing everyone else. It is time for real solutions. For a long time we heard Fianna Fáil criticising us for a lack of solutions. I am interested that for the first time, Fianna Fáil is talking about a rent freeze, something that Sinn Féin has been talking about for a long time. That is something real and actionable that the Government can do and that this side of the House has been calling for for a long time. Now Fine Gael's coalition partner is calling for it. Will the Taoiseach now take the step that is clearly required to stop these runaway rents that are forcing people into poverty and homelessness? Will he give people that break and put in place a rent freeze?

As the Deputy will be aware, we have introduced rent controls-----

I am talking about a rent freeze.

That was 4%.

-----and as a consequence of those rent controls, the maximum rent increase is 4% in any given year. For hundreds of thousands of people who would have seen rent increases much greater than that, the rent increase has been somewhere between 0% and 4% a year. Consideration was given-----

It has led to evictions.

-----to a rent freeze. Notwithstanding the constitutional issues that may make that impossible, even if it was possible, there is a real concern about the unintended consequences of a rent freeze. What we may see happening in the event of a rent freeze is less supply. Ultimately, those who need to rent need to find somewhere to rent. While a rent freeze might work for people who are renting already because their rent would not rise, it might cause less new supply. People who need to rent for the first time, the young people the Deputy mentioned, people who have to leave the home they have been renting for some reason, people who lose the home that they owned, people coming in from other countries could really suffer in the event of a rent freeze. We have seen in other countries where they have introduced rent freezes that this has happened. It is protecting people who are renting already-----

It is done in many cities throughout the world.

-----because they do not see an increase but people who have to rent for the first time can run into real difficulties and that is why we think that is a policy that could indeed be counterproductive.

Let us talk about what the solutions actually are. The main solution has to be supply. Ultimately there has to be enough places for people to rent. To do that, we must increase the supply of social housing for people who are on the housing list, getting them out of private rented accommodation, off HAP and rent supplement and into social housing. Some 10,000 new social homes were provided this year, more than any year of this decade. We are ramping it up as quickly as we can with 11,000 next year, 12,000 the year after and 60,000 over the next five years. Of course, there is a need for increased provision of private homes because people want to buy their own home. They also want to be able to rent out a home. We see now from the numbers that came out yesterday a big increase in commencement notices and planning permissions so a very strong pipeline is coming beyond that. What we see unfortunately, though, is some people, in particular local authorities, voting down proposals for new housing.

As regards the Deputy's party, the truth hurts, and then they start shouting, but I will be heard.

Is €310,000 affordable?

Sinn Féin is a party that only a few weeks ago, tried to vote down a proposal for 800 new homes less than four miles from here, close to Dublin city centre.

Is €1,400 affordable for rental? What planet is he on?

Nine hundred homes, new homes for people to buy, social housing and places for people to rent but the Deputy's party voted against it.

Would the people from O'Devaney Gardens be able to pay that kind of money? Is that what he is saying?

In here, they bemoan the housing crisis and shortage. In the places where they turn up to vote, they vote against housing.

Before we go on, may I appeal to Members? While tensions are a little bit higher because there are by-elections impending, the same members of the public are sitting at home watching this Chamber and expecting it to behave in a respectful and constructive manner. Will Members try to stop heckling the Taoiseach?

We have to live in the real world.

Heckling will not bring us any closer to the real world. I call Deputy Ó Laoghaire, please.