Le gach seachtain a ritheann, tá an ghéarchéim tithíochta ag dul ó smacht i gcónaí. Léiríonn an tuarascáil cíosa is déanaí a d'fhoilsigh Daft.ie ar maidin go bhfuil an meánchíos iarrtha thuas beagnach 12% ar fud an Stáit. With every week that passes, the housing crisis continues to spiral out of control. Rents are rising, house prices are rising and social housing needs continue to grow. The latest rental report published by Daft.ie this morning shows that the average asking rent is up by nearly 12% across the State and that 22 counties are seeing double-digit rent inflation. Rents are increasing by over 20% in counties Roscommon, Leitrim and Donegal, my county. The consumer price index that was published this morning shows that the rent paid by all private renters, including new and existing tenants, has risen by 9.3% in the past year. This is madness.

By every meaningful measure, the Government's housing plan is failing and the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage is failing. His latest plan is to give developers between €120,000 and €144,000 of taxpayers' money for each apartment they build. The Minister has said that the aim of this scheme is to enable affordability for people to be able to buy and that the beneficiaries would be the public, who will be in a position, he says, to buy apartments in city schemes. On the radio this week, the Tánaiste's colleague Senator Cummins claimed that this was a subsidy for the purchaser but the reality and the kicker are as follows: the scheme the Government claims is aimed at increasing affordability explicitly rules out discounts for purchasers. It is a big payday for developers but there is zero, zilch, nada for those who desperately want to purchase affordable homes in our city. It means that purchasers will still have to fork out between €500,000 and €600,000, or more, because these apartments will be sold at market prices. Who on Earth can afford these off-the-wall prices? The Government's scheme is not about creating affordability for those on ordinary incomes. It is clear from this scheme that at best it will lock in sky-high and unaffordable prices, and at worst it will drive up housing prices even further as developers will simply price in the subsidy. Of all the pro-developer schemes that the Tánaiste and his Government have come up with, this one takes the biscuit. This is absolute madness.

The big problem with the Government’s housing policy is that all the measures it has introduced so far are driving up the cost of homes. Is it any wonder that so many people have given up, right across this city and beyond, on the aspiration of owning a home? The Tánaiste has said he believes in home ownership but he has a funny way of showing it because people are looking on at this latest scheme in complete disbelief. It is bonkers for the Tánaiste, his Government and the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage to be giving €120,000 to €144,000 to developers for each apartment they deliver and not to deliver any price reduction for home buyers because that is what this is. Housing can be fixed, and this generation can have a real chance, but to do that the Government needs to turn away from the policies that prioritise the profits of developers and finally put a focus on meeting the housing needs of ordinary workers and families. I put it to the Tánaiste that the Government should scrap the scheme of handing out €450 million to developers. What about the following for an idea? What about using that €450 million to directly deliver homes that people can afford to buy?

There can be no doubt that rents are too high in Ireland and that far too many people have to spend too much of their income on rent, often at the expense of other things such as saving to buy a house, paying into a pension fund or investing in their education or that of their children. It is a dual crisis; one of affordability and availability. Sometimes when you try to improve one of those things you can make the other worse. That is why we need to be careful about the policy interventions the Government makes.

On affordability, as the Deputy knows we have brought in rent controls for most renters and the maximum increase possible is 2% in any given year. That is much lower than the rate of inflation, which is running at around 6%. The Daft.ie report that the Deputy referenced acknowledges that. It says that stayers, people who have stayed put, have faced a 10% increase on average since 2017. That is about a 10% increase over the course of the past four years. These are not my numbers; they are from the Daft.ie report the Deputy referenced. It is a different picture for new tenancies, with a 38% increase in the last four years. That is a reflection of the fact that so few homes and apartments are becoming available for rent for the first time.

I refer to what we can do around availability. We can ramp up social housing and we can provide cost rental housing, which we are doing. In social housing, we anticipate that about 10,000 new social homes will be added to the housing stock this year. That is important as it gets people off the housing list but it also frees up other properties that people may rent or buy, which can also help a lot. It started before this year but for the first time we are seeing cost rental becoming available for people as an option. That is a good option because it is Government-provided rental accommodation which people can rent at a rate that is significantly lower than the market average. That is becoming a reality for people now. It has been planned for years but it is very much an option for people now and we need a lot more of that.

We have to consider what more we can do to improve the situation. It is clear that small landlords are selling up and leaving the market. I often hear the Deputy and others make out that they are making a killing but that is not the case. If that was the case they would not be selling up and leaving. We have to look at ways to encourage small landlords to continue to rent out their properties and maybe we should encourage others to rent out properties for the first time. We also need to scale up cost rental, something this Government and I are big supporters of, and provide more cost rental units for people to rent. We have set a target of at least 2,000 cost rental units per year and we believe that is achievable. We also need to increase the supply of homes for people to buy and we are seeing some good signs in supply. We will get about 25,000 new homes built this year and that will be the highest in a long time, with 35,000 under construction and 45,000 going through planning permission. We can see an encouraging pipeline coming through in additional supply. We need to do more to fast-track the planning process and reform our planning laws to make sure more developments do not end up stuck in judicial reviews, which is a big problem. We have two affordable housing schemes coming on stream this year, one that is local authority-led and one that is private sector-led. Those will allow people on middle incomes to apply for affordable housing, which will help a lot of people to buy their first homes. In addition, we have the help-to-buy scheme where people get their taxes back, including income tax they have paid for the past two or three years, something Sinn Féin opposes. That has already helped 32,000 individuals and couples to buy their first homes. These are people who otherwise might not be in homes and would still be renting. I encourage Sinn Féin to end its opposition to that scheme.

How long has the Tánaiste been in government now? Is it ten or 11 years? Over that period when the Tánaiste has been sitting around the Cabinet table we have seen rents double. He was tweeting two years ago about how Government policies were working. He tweeted:

Rents down, homelessness down, house prices levelling off. Our policies are working.

Let me put some facts to the Tánaiste; not Sinn Féin's facts but the facts of the Central Statistics Office, CSO. In the last year rents have gone up for new and existing tenancies by 9.3%. Housing prices have gone up by 15% in the last year. In the last two years the number of people in homelessness has increased by 15%. On any viewing of those numbers, the Government's policies are failing.

We have warned time and time again, as have some within the Department and other external agencies, that the initiatives the Government is bringing in will increase house prices and push up rents further. This hare-brained idea the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage has and which the Tánaiste obviously supports will give away €144,000 of taxpayers' money to developers to build apartments while ordinary workers and families will be asked to fork out between €500,000 and €600,000 for those same apartments. How can the Tánaiste stand over such a hare-brained scheme?

This Government has been in office for just over two years.

I asked the Tánaiste.

That is a fact and I can give the Deputy some more facts in a moment. This Government has been in office for just over two years. The party I lead has been in office for about 11 years. No party has been in government on this island longer than Deputy Doherty's party in the past 20 years. Sinn Féin has been in government in Northern Ireland for most of the past 20 years. I am very happy to compare our record in government over the past ten years with that of the Deputy's party. His is the party that increased rents in Northern Ireland. His party increased the property tax, which is the domestic rates system in Northern Ireland.

The public had its vote on that a couple of days ago, with respect.

The Tánaiste without interruption.

His was the party to increase the pension age in Northern Ireland.

Maybe you should stand in the next election.

Any time I tell him a few home truths about his party's record in government-----

Answer the question.

-----in Northern Ireland, he loses the rag-----

Does the Tánaiste stand over this bonkers idea of giving taxpayers' money to developers?

Deputy Doherty is out of order.

----because he does not want people to know the truth.

We know the truth.

Answer the question.

That is the record of his party in Northern Ireland. Whether it is Covid, employment, poverty-----

Look at the elections.

The largest party in the North.

-----he only has reasons to be ashamed of his party's performance in government.

Why is the Government giving taxpayers' money to developers? Answer the question.

Please, Deputy, you are out of order.

The Tánaiste cannot stand over the policy of the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage on this because it is so bonkers he cannot even defend it.

I ask Deputy Doherty to resume his seat and show some respect to the House.

Maybe the Tánaiste should.

May I make a point of order?

No, we do not want any points of order.

The Tánaiste cannot even defend it.