This morning, the Tánaiste said that most people in this country will be better off after yesterday's budget and the Taoiseach has more or less reiterated that myth. It is critical to puncture that myth and get across the truth about what happened in yesterday's budget. Using even the most elementary arithmetic, looking at the details of the budget will show that is not true. The Minister, Deputy Donohoe, pointed out that inflation is running at 3.7%. The Tánaiste actually got the figure wrong this morning and said it was less than 3%, but at least the Minister, Deputy Donohoe, knows what the rate of inflation is. Added to that are the carbon tax increases and the energy price hikes.

I want to zone in on one particular group and I want to use examples from the Government's own budget documentation to show how it disgracefully let down renters in this country. Its claim that little adjustments to USC compensate for that is simply not true. I will use some of the examples because I actually bothered to read the Government's budget books. The booklet entitled, Tax Policy Changes, gives example 3 of Mairéad, who is single and works in the hospitality sector earning €30,000 a year. Given that Mairéad works in hospitality and is single, it is very likely she is a renter. The booklet also gives the example of Roan, who is self-employed earning €40,000 a year, and Nicole with one child. Very likely they are renters. How much of a break on the tax they pay has the Government given them? Mairéad got the grand total of 0.5% more. Roan and Nicole got 0.5%. They along with the majority of people in this country are earning average industrial wages or median wages but the inflation rate is 3.7%. The rise in the cost of living will wipe out by about five or six times what the Government has given to Mairéad, and Roan and Nicole.

However, the situation for rent is even worse. Average rents in Dublin now are in fact higher than Deputy McDonald pointed out. The August Daft.ie report pointed out that average rents in Dublin are €2,200 in south County Dublin and just marginally under €2,000 in Dublin city. In the three months of the second quarter of this year, they increased by 5.7%, on top of 4.4% last year. Of course, many people in rented accommodation also have poor-quality, badly insulated homes and they have no control over energy price hikes. Is it not actually the truth that the Government has done nothing for Mairéad or for Roan, Nicole and their child? The vast majority of renters are seeing rents go through the roof and become completely unaffordable along with other costs they must bear like energy costs, carbon tax increases and so on. Is it not the truth that the Government has badly let them down?

No, it is not the truth. The first point I would make is the overall context of this budget is that as we are emerging, we hope, from the pandemic, and there are still some challenges so we are not out of the woods yet regarding Covid-19, but the vaccination programme and the phased reopening of the economy and society have meant a more accelerated economic recovery than anybody anticipated two or three months ago. That is of value to everybody in society, including renters. Between 2021 and 2022, we are looking at potentially 400,000 jobs returning to the economy. That is fundamental to people who are renting and to all our people. We now need to try to consolidate and maintain that. The budget is in the context of dealing with a once-in-a-century pandemic. Notwithstanding that, we were in a position to give modest relief to people. I am not saying this is the be-all and end-all. The indexation of tax does help people. I do not know whether the Deputy is opposing it. We think the indexation of tax credits and bands modestly helps many people on low and middle incomes, including renters.

There is other cost of living assistance. For example, the investment in childcare will consolidate capacity within childcare and assist people working in childcare who are also renters. Yesterday's budget is a significant turning point for pay and conditions within the childcare sector and creates career pathways for people in childcare which we urgently need to do. We need to build on that in subsequent budgets to make childcare more affordable. Childcare and rent are the two big pressure points for many people in society.

The most effective economic way to deal with rents is to get more houses built - more affordable houses and social houses. Our resources are targeted in that direction while at the same time providing about €600 million to support those on very low incomes who, because of insufficient social housing, are renting using the HAP scheme and RAS and are benefiting from rent supplement. That cannot be ignored and represents a significant targeting of resources by Government to people on very low incomes who are renting.

In the health area, the individuals the Deputy mentioned will benefit from the expansion of access to free GP care, the reduction in the contributions for drug payments and other initiatives such as the abolition of hospital charges for paediatrics. When all that is taken in the round along with the investment in education, including, for example, a significant expansion of DEIS investment and investment in special needs education, we are helping many people in a very targeted and effective way. Most economists do not believe the proposals for more direct relief for renters would have the desired impact in improving the rental market. They believe it could have the opposite effect.

We have a different view about how to deal with rents than some of the other Opposition parties. We believe we should control rents, as is done in other countries, and set rents at affordable levels based on people's income and the size of the property, not refunds or things that will inflate the market, but actual rent controls.

I go back to the example of Mairéad. Based on average Dublin rents, Mairéad is paying between €18,000 and €24,000 a year in rent after tax on her income of €30,000. It is similar for Roan and Nicole.

How are they possibly supposed to manage that? How do the abysmal and derisory measures just referred to by the Taoiseach in any way deal with that? They simply do not, and for the Taoiseach to mention HAP is just unbelievable. The vast majority of people with HAP in Dublin are making top-up payments to landlords because the HAP limits are too low, so the landlords are creaming it with public money they are getting as part of these rents of between €1,800 and €2,200 per month. In addition, they are getting tax breaks on the rental revenue and capital gains they make on the property. That is while Mairéad, Roan, Nicole and their child, along with tens of thousands of other renters, are being absolutely screwed to the wall. There is not one word in the budget books about renters. There is not a single word.

The Deputy is wrong and he knows it. The only way to deal with the rental situation is to build houses and provide houses for Mairéad and all the people he mentioned. Ultimately, the only way to deal with this is to build far more social houses than we have built before and far more affordable houses than we have built before. The Deputy is not in favour of the affordable housing approach.

We are but it must be genuinely affordable.

He is not. He has opposed projects left, right and centre because they did not have the right mix for the representatives on the councils and so on.

We opposed the selling of public lands.

That is opposition. Does the Deputy not get that if we do not get supply fast, it could hold up projects for four or five years? That is doing more damage to renters than anything else.

There was lots of supply during the Celtic tiger.

I can count up to 6,000 units that have been opposed by the people opposite. That is political hypocrisy at the end of the day.

Unaffordable supply is not useful to Roan and Nicole.

We need supply in social housing at a scale we have not done going back maybe to the 1930s, 1950s, 1960s or 1970s. We need to go back to that and get substantial social housing built. We also need to get affordable houses built as well. We need private sector development for the building of houses as well so we can reduce the dependency on the rental market on which, unfortunately, so many people depend.

Time is up.

On the question of rent control, we have been told that a freeze would be unconstitutional. It is easy to keep shouting we should freeze rents for three years but we are being told it cannot be done.

We should have a referendum on it.