Reference has been made to the possibility that Dublin City Council will decide to increase rents for council tenants. South Dublin County Council has already decided to do this. I want to ask the Tánaiste about what is quite an outrageous decision by his party, Fine Gael, together with Fianna Fáil and the Green Party, to support an increase in rents. There has been a cruel increase of €3 a week across the board regardless of income, combined with an additional €10 a week for a set of old age pensioners. This is a heartless attack on some of the most vulnerable people on low incomes. It is an attack, presumably supported by the Tánaiste, which underscores the nature of Fine Gael and the Government's housing policy as being to protect those who have it and attack those who do not.

Last Saturday, the Taoiseach, not for the first time, declared that opposition to the Government's position on housing and criticism of its approach on housing is ideological, unlike the Government's position. In the Dáil on Tuesday, he argued that anyone opposed to giving away public land to private developers has an ideological position, whereas the Government has no ideology at all. It is just a bunch of pragmatists doing their very best to resolve the crisis who have, by pure accident, stumbled into a situation where they preside over the greatest level of homelessness and housing crisis in the history of the State at the very same time as we have the highest levels of rents and profits for landlords and developers. It is an approach to ideology seen in the kings and queens who ruled the world in the past. They did not say they had a feudal ideology that justified why they ruled. They said they had a divine right to rule, just like the Government believes the market has the divine right to rule and landlords and developers have a divine and constitutional right to maximise their profits.

Those who benefit from the Government's ideology are extremely obvious. Last year, landlords received record rents of €13 billion. This was up from €5.5 billion in 2009. The largest corporate landlord in Ireland, Ires REIT, paid nothing in corporation tax last year on profits of €120 million. Developers continue to profit massively, with combined sales last year increasing by 25%. The losers are everybody affected by the housing crisis, including tenants affected by rents of more than €2,000 a month in Dublin, young people who cannot afford a home and families struggling to access mortgages. Now there are new victims. These are council tenants who will be hit by €156 extra in rent annually and the pensioners attacked by having to pay another €676 per year. Does the Tánaiste agree with this attack? Does he agree with attacking those on the lowest incomes in our society at the same time as protecting the landlords and developers? People will not accept it. They will mobilise on the streets on 5 December at 12 noon at the Garden of Remembrance. Council tenants should participate.

I hope people will come along to the protest called by Solidarity for Monday, 9 December, at the council offices to build a campaign to oppose this attack as part of building a wider movement on the housing crisis.

Every time the Deputy takes to his feet in the House, he seems to be calling for a new protest over something. I understand the frustrations and anger over the housing crisis. They are very genuine. I served in the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government and know this only too well. There are far too many people who are homeless. There are far too many families and children, in particular, affected by homelessness and whom I am sure are being scarred by it. The Government's response to that is to try to prioritise the issue from funding, policy and practical delivery perspectives. That is happening. We have changed the planning process and increased the numbers of protections for tenants. We have included what is effectively a rent cap or ceiling. We are building more social houses now than at any other time this century. This year, there will be more than 10,000 additional social houses on our social housing list. We are working with local authorities, particularly in our cities, where the pressure is most acute, to try to drive projects. In Cork city alone, the council is involved in 78 projects. The city chief executive confirmed to the Taoiseach and me last week that, in 2014, when there was no money being spent on social housing because there was not much money available, Cork City Council had one social house under construction. It currently has 1,000 under construction. That is what the Government is trying to do for vulnerable people who need the support of the State in order to get into social housing. We are seeing the progression of affordable housing units also. Again, we are focusing particularly on our cities, where the pressures are most acute. We will continue to take action to ensure housing is prioritised because it is a major issue for so many.

Next year, the housing budget will be over €2.6 billion. This represents a dramatic increase over the budget for recent years in terms of what the Government could afford. Therefore, we are not targeting anybody; rather, we are trying to help people who are in difficult circumstances. Many are in temporary accommodation that is not suitable in the long term. The objective is to get people into homes so they can have stable lives in them with the support of the State. We are making progress on that but there is still a lot of work to do.

The Tánaiste did not even attempt to answer the question. It relates to whether, despite his talk of not targeting anybody, he agrees with the decision of his Fine Gael colleagues, together with their colleagues in Fianna Fáil and the Green Party, to increase council rents for individuals in the South Dublin County Council area. These are individuals on low and fixed incomes whom the Government is hitting with an across-the-board increase of €3 per week on a rent that is based on 10% of income. Now everybody is hit with a rise of €3 per week. Does the Tánaiste agree with hitting old-age pensioners with an increase of €10 per week on top of that? Does he agree with increasing their rent by €13 per week? If he does, how on earth can he say all this other stuff? When he comes out with the idea that this will be sorted, nobody believes him. When he says he is delivering more social housing than ever, it is a lie. It is not accurate.

It is not me who is saying it. It is in the statistics.

No, because the Tánaiste has reframed what social housing is. He believes that giving money to private landlords amounts to providing social housing. How many local authority houses is he building?

People are right to be angry. There are over 65,000 people in a Facebook group organising for the protest on 5 December. They are ordinary people. They are not organised in any political party. They are angry and right to come out to protest. It is the only thing that will force the Government to do anything to resolve the housing crisis.

I accept that there is anger. At times, protest is part of democracy. We respect and accept that. There have been many protests, understandably, in respect of the need to resolve what has been a housing crisis for a number of years. We are responding to that with a lot more money and policies that are actually working. The Deputy does not have to trust me on that; he should look at the CSO statistics on the numbers of social houses being built, affordable houses being built or in planning and the private houses under construction. There are dramatic increases.

The Tánaiste should answer the question.

The issue of how local authorities deal with their tenants is one for those authorities to debate and discuss. I do not have the detailed rationale on why a decision may be made on modest increases in rent but I believe people have a right to ask the question.

It is €600 per year for a pensioner.

People do have a right to ask why it should ever be acceptable to ask for a modest increase in the contribution towards rental charges if they are seeing changes in conditions and investment by local authorities and so on but that is a matter for South Dublin County Council. I am sure that, like us, the Deputy has colleagues on that council who are well able to speak up and argue their points.

They voted to increase the rent.

The important point is that we are providing significantly more social houses year on year. More than 10,000 extra houses have been added to the stock this year. These are not fantasy numbers; they are very real.

That relates to the housing assistance payment, not housing.

They will support families in a very real way.

How many local authority houses?