The first day of the new Dáil term was dominated by the turf wars, not an unimportant issue but, in my view, far from the most important issue in Irish society. An issue of far greater concern to my constituents is the price of rent. There was no surprise this morning when we learned the new figures from the Residential Tenancies Board, RTB, with rent up 9% year on year. We do not see Ministers coming to blows on this issue. We do not see Government backbenchers raising the spectre of the fall of the Government on this issue. Why not? Perhaps it is not so surprising. There are so many landlords on the Government benches, on the Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael benches, that the satisfaction levels on this issue must be quite high on the Taoiseach's side of the House.

I am beyond asking the Taoiseach to freeze rents. Freezing would maintain them at an unjust level. I am asking the Taoiseach whether he is prepared to consider legislation to cut rents and then to freeze them at reduced levels.

As the Deputy knows, we had the rent pressure zones on existing tenancies, which are effective according to the ESRI, which has done a lot of research on the application of the rent pressure zones in keeping rents down.

More than a third broke the guidelines.

The RTB relates to new tenancies. Supply is the key. What is very important is that we really get supply up, which we are doing now, with 35,000 houses from March 2021 to March this year on all streams – social, private and cost rental. That is the key to this and we are going to continue to work on getting that supply up.

I would really appreciate the Deputy’s co-operation in making sure that if developments come along, we do not oppose them all of the time, that people do not oppose them and that we allow development to happen. If we do not get supply right, it is all hot air.