The Taoiseach has made a lot of the fact that the rate of increase is slowing. What does that say to people in reality? The Taoiseach is telling people they are still drowning, just not drowning as quickly they were, but it is going to keep getting worse. He is closing the door long after the horse has bolted and has offered nothing to deal with the crisis that is facing renters. Under his watch, not a single, affordable home has been built to rent or buy under Rebuilding Ireland. The rent pressures zones are not working. This situation is unsustainable. It is a crisis, is forcing people into penury and is locking young people out of any chance of having a permanent home. Every action the Government has taken on the housing crisis is a day late and a dollar short. As there now appears to be a consensus, this is his chance finally to get ahead of this rental crisis and to put in place the radical solution that is needed by this radical crisis, namely, a rent freeze and rent relief for all renters.

The Deputy in his opening question spoke about Cork, which is the city he represents. He may be interested to know that the latest figures tell us that in the year to June 2019, there were 2,095 commencement notices in County Cork, which is up 20% on the previous year.

Five hundred people are homeless.

There were 593 of these in the city, which is a 150% increase on the previous year. We are seeing new housing being delivered. It took a long time for us to get to the position where we could get the construction sector and social housing going again. That is now happening. Due to the financial crisis and the crash, we had a seven-year period during which almost no new homes were built. As a result, we have a big deficit of housing in this country, which is at the root of the problems we face. Finally, we are getting to the position where we are seeing real and sustained increases in supply. This year, 10,000 social homes are being provided, which is getting people off housing lists and into permanent tenancies with a big increase in the supply of private housing as well. There are more places for people to buy and rent. As a result, we can now see house prices are levelling off and falling in Dublin, as we see from the daft.ie report today. In the words of the author, which I repeat and they are not my words, "It looks as though Ireland's longest-ever run of increasing rental prices may soon come to an end." Would that not be a good thing?

The economy has stabilised and the public finances are in balance, thanks to the sacrifices made by the people of this country over the past ten years. Because of the positive role of immigration, we retain a relatively young population compared with most of Europe. We have to plan for the growing number of older citizens and for the gradual increase in the average age of the population. We do not have to have what at present is the highest retirement age in Europe. Right now, people are not entitled to the State pension until the age of 66. This is due to rise to 67 in 2021. That would put Ireland into a small group of countries with the highest retirement age in Europe. We are living longer. In future, people who go to third level education will likely only begin their careers in their mid-20 or later and probably will work beyond the age of 65 but we are not there yet. Many people who are now approaching retirement came into the labour market in their teens and have already done up to 50 years of work and paid up to 50 years of tax and social insurance contributions.

They have made their contribution to society and it is unjust to force them to wait another two years to receive their pensions. Many are tied into contracts that require them to retire at the age of 65 years. Some may choose to work longer if they can, but many of them do not have that option. For someone who may have been working in the same job for decades to suddenly seek a new job at the age of 65 years is not easy. Some employers may be reluctant to take on people in their 60s. Those in this cohort end up seeking jobseeker's benefit. The Government has created an exception to the rules for jobseeker's benefit to allow the payment to continue until a person retires, but there is no need to require thousands of older people to enter a pre-retirement period to wait for their pensions. The Social Insurance Fund is projected to have a surplus of €3.8 billion by the end of the year. We now have funds to pause or slow down the increase in the retirement age and give society time to adjust in order that those entering the labour force later can project themselves working later. We have the opportunity not to proceed in the timeframe forced on us when we were in the troika programme. In my judgment we can afford to allow 66 year olds to continue to access the full State pension, for which they have more than paid. Will the Taoiseach reflect, as I have done, and agree that it is time to pause the current plan to increase the waiting time again in 2021? Should we not give society and the economy more time to adjust before raising the retirement age beyond the current age of 66 years?

I acknowledge that the Deputy has acknowledged that there is now a budget surplus and that the Social Insurance Fund is back in surplus. In fact, it has been in surplus for several years. It recorded a small technical surplus last year and it looks like that it is going to record a bigger surplus this year than was even projected on budget day, notwithstanding the views of some, including the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council, that it would not do so.

The State pension age is due to rise to 67 years in 2021 and 68 in 2028. It is true that we are doing this ahead of most other European countries, but other European countries are also raising the retirement age. The reform was introduced by my forebear in the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection, Deputy Burton, and we supported it because it was important to make pensions sustainable. I have a lot of sympathy for the Labour Party sometimes when it does not receive enough credit for the tough decisions it made when in government with us for five years. I do not believe it gets enough credit for that and have said this before. However, I have no sympathy for the fact that the Labour Party, largely for electoral reasons, is now trying to move away from reforms it introduced . That is unfortunate. It is as simple as this: in the 1970s the State pension age was, believe it or not, 70 years. The average man lived to 68 years and the average woman to 72. The whole idea was that, over the course of one's working life, one paid a small amount into a pension fund in order to have enough for the short number of years for which one would be retired. A wonderful thing has happened since in that life expectancy has improved. People are living much longer, which is great, but it raises questions about the sustainability of the pension system in the long term. If we do not start to raise the pension age now, we may find that people now in their 30s, 40s or 50s will not receive a pension at all at a certain point. Knowing that is why Deputy Burton introduced the reforms. Essentially, Deputy Howlin is saying that since we do not now have a problem, we should put off taking action. Is that not what was said about climate change 20 or 30 years ago? Is it not what was said about so many other things? It has been said that since we do not have the problem now, we should not fix it, that we should wait until it is a problem before we fix it. What Deputy Burton decided to do was to get ahead of the problem and make sure pension payments would be sustainable in the longer term by making reforms in order that we would not have to wait until there was a problem to fix. I am disappointed that the Labour Party has moved away from that position.

I had hoped the Taoiseach might once look objectively at a serious proposal in changed circumstances, rather than always trying to be so partisan. We have come a long way since dire decisions were made under the troika's direction. The Taoiseach knows that; he is not a fool.

However, there are real issues that require to be addressed, one of which is whether this is the time to at least defer the decision in line with that made in other countries in Europe because of our demographics and people are coming on stream who will have to sign on after working for 50 years to receive a social welfare payment, not a retirement payment. That does not make sense.

It did not make sense when it was introduced either.

We can close the gap for them. The Taoiseach is correct that there was a much higher retirement age in the 1970s. It was Brendan Corish and Frank Cluskey who reduced it. It is time to reflect again on these issues. We looked objectively, for example, at including the self-employed in the system of social benefits. Their contribution to the Social Insurance Fund is a fraction of that of the employed, but it was a justice issue. We did not say that as it would deplete the Social Insurance Fund, let us not do it. I ask the Taoiseach, rather than dismissing my request, to objectively consider it, at least for the next five years, to allow gradual preparation to face a later retirement age.

I do not fully agree with the Deputy's statement that circumstances have changed.

The troika did.

One set of circumstances has changed. The public finances are in much better shape than they were, but the fundamental circumstance that caused Deputy Burton, when Minister, to introduce this reform, namely, rising life expectancy, has not changed. That was the fundamental reason for the reform.

As the Taoiseach is aware, the timing was dictated by the troika.

When the then Minister, Deputy Burton, introduced the reform, she did not introduce it right away as an emergency response to the financial crisis; she set a future date of 2021 for its implementation. It was not an emergency response to the crisis we faced at the time; it was the then Minister thinking and planning ahead and introducing a necessary reform a little before it was needed. The Labour Party has now abandoned that policy and stated let us put it off; let us wait until there is a crisis before we deal with it.

Rubbish.

That is exactly how we get things so wrong in this country so often; we wait until there is a crisis before we deal with it. The then Minister was correct. This is an emerging problem and we can see that in the medium term pensions could become unsustainable. She was right to bring forward that reform to increase the pension age and to give people plenty of notice by passing the law in 2017 but not implementing it until 2021.

The Taoiseach will not give people a break.

I can understand why, for electoral reasons or reasons of popularity, we could go out and say we were not doing this. People aged between 62 and 65 years would say that was great and that they would vote for the parties that were stating this because they would not have to retire at 67 years but at 66. However, the ones who would lose out are the people who are in their 40s and 50s or who are 60 because they are the ones who would see major reductions in their pension payments if we do not get ahead of this problem and make pensions sustainable long before there is a crisis.

Rubbish.

Let us for once in the country's history fix a problem before there is a crisis.

Hear, hear.