The Taoiseach has been scathing of those of us who intend to vote no confidence in the Government this evening, suggesting it is negative and cynical and asking why we do not concentrate on positive proposals. This week, the Government has an opportunity to prove it is interested in positive proposals. The reason I have no confidence in this Government is that as we head into the summer recess it has done nothing to take on board positive proposals to deal with the utterly dire housing and homelessness crisis and the rental crisis blighting hundreds of thousands of working families and ordinary householders.

Tomorrow, People Before Profit have a Bill to reduce rents to affordable levels and link rents to people's income and their ability to pay, in other words, to have real rent controls, which the Government has failed to introduce successfully. Will the Government support our rent reduction Bill to bring rents down to 25% of median income? Why do we need such a measure? We have 320,000 renters and average rents nationally are currently €1,400 per month, which is totally unaffordable for huge numbers of working families. In Dublin they are €2,000 per month on average. That is €24,000 per year for an ordinary family. That is absolutely unaffordable. In my area, the average rent in the past six months was €2,600. The consequence of the Government's failure to control these rents is that we now have record numbers of families in homelessness, including children, as we head into the summer recess, and it is getting worse every week.

As if all that is not bad enough, in a report by Killian Woods in the Business Post at the weekend we discovered who is benefiting from this misery and these extortionate, unaffordable rents. Of the 91 applications put in for strategic housing development build-to-rent apartment blocks, 21 were lodged by investment entities based in tax havens, including the Isle of Man, Guernsey and the Virgin Islands, where the identities of the investors and shareholders are not even disclosed to the local authorities. These are tax dodgers - corporate tax dodgers - benefiting off the misery of people who are paying these extortionate rents. If the Taoiseach is serious about wanting positive proposals, I have a simple question for him. Will the Government support our Bill tomorrow to set rents at affordable levels? This has recently been done in France and other countries, by the way. Is the Taoiseach serious about people suffering from the rental and housing crisis or is he just spoofing?

It is no surprise to me that Sinn Féin and People Before Profit together will work very hard to have a motion of no confidence passed. They are working hand in glove on many of these issues in opposition to the Government. I put it to the Deputy that People Before Profit's economic platform, and Sinn Féin's, is one that would undermine the capacity of many working people to afford a lot of things because-----

Do the words "Celtic tiger" mean anything to anybody? Please.

-----the anti-enterprise agenda of Sinn Féin and People Before Profit will undermine workers' incomes.

Micheál Martin and the Celtic tiger.

Deputy, please.

The bottom line is this Government has delivered an exceptionally strong economic recovery.

We have rising homelessness, rising house prices and rising rents.

The truth hurts, Deputy Ó Broin.

The Deputy is not the leader of his party and should allow Deputy Boyd Barrett to speak. I know Sinn Féin wants to take over and subsume People Before Profit into Sinn Féin but the least he can do now is to allow Deputy Boyd Barrett to have his say.

There was a 40% rise in child homelessness last year.

The point I am making is that the Government has delivered an exceptionally strong economic recovery, with the fastest jobs growth in the European Union. The bottom line is that 2.5 million people are employed. That is significant in the context of people's capacity to deal with exceptional cost-of-living issues. Rent is too high in this country. Deputy Boyd Barrett's Bill would make matters worse.

Bringing down rents would make matters worse.

It is a simplistic response. It is classic People Before Profit to produce legislation that will not work. The Deputy knows it will not work but it is popular, populist and non-implementable.

How would it make things worse?

There would be a complete flood of people out of the market.

That has been happening for four years due to the Government's policies.

There would not be a landlord left under the Deputy's proposals. The Bill is also ill-defined. It refers to nominal medium disposable income. Could the Deputy start to define that?

The definition is in the Bill.

The Bill is technically illiterate in its propositions. It is also economically illiterate. There is no question that it is unworkable legislation. That does not bother the Deputy. His whole approach, coming from the far left, is destabilisation and keep producing and being popular. We have to work with real life, which is difficult for people. Rent is very high. Supply is key to resolving the matter. We will build a record number of social houses this year.

That is not true.

That is important. We have significantly increased the discretion to local authorities, for example, with regard to the housing assistance payment, HAP, scheme. It has increased by over 35%.

That has not been introduced or enacted.

It has been introduced. Deputy Ó Broin should stop with the mistruths and misleading.

That is not true.

The work on HAP has been significant in terms of the response of the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, to the issues that were raised when people sought greater discretion for local authorities to apply to the scheme.

It has not been enacted. The Taoiseach should talk to his local authority.

I guess that is a "No". The Government will not be supporting a Bill to reduce rents to affordable levels. That is not overly surprising from parties that are dominated by a disproportionate number of landlords relative to the population. Approximately €13 billion has been spent through HAP, the rental accommodation scheme, RAS, and leasing since 2001. That money in various rent supports and rent allowance has gone into the pockets of landlords. We now discover - and I note the Taoiseach did not respond on this point - that entities based in tax havens offshore in the Virgin Islands and whose identities are undisclosed are benefiting from this crisis. The Taoiseach is saying it is unrealistic that we control rents. Of course, when we called on the Government to stop evictions, the Government said it could not do it. The Government then stopped evictions during the pandemic because it had to. What happened? The number of families going into homelessness reduced. As soon as the Government allowed evictions to restart, the numbers of families going into homelessness went up and are now at record proportions. The truth is that the Taoiseach has no solutions but tries to dismiss ours when all of his Government's have failed. When will he listen to the hardship and suffering that people are enduring and take on board some proposals that are aimed at ameliorating that suffering?

I will always take on board proposals once they are realistic. The Deputy is not tabling a motion on the basis of realism.

It is a Bill.

He is tabling the Bill on the basis of politics and to be popular. He proved that with his opening line when he asked who is against reducing rent. Nobody is against that.

The Government is going to vote against the Bill.

The Deputy produces legislation, puts it up on the wall and then claims the Government is voting against reducing rents. The Deputy can claim his party is voting for it and they are, therefore, the virtuous ones. That completely ignores the reality on the ground in terms of the non-implementability, to coin a phrase, of the Bill. It is not doable. It is as simple as that. We have rent controls in the rent pressure zones. What is doable is to build the largest ever number of social houses this year, which we will. We will have to do that every year for the next five to ten years. We must build far more affordable and cost rental homes. We have to maintain HAP, which is a strong subsidy for people who are renting now.

The Government is cutting people off HAP.

We cannot eliminate HAP right now because there would be thousands and thousands of people without homes if there was no HAP. It is a substantial rent subsidy to people on low incomes, which is as it should be right now.

Time is up please.

That is the reality of where we are right now. We have to deal with that and build more houses. As we build more houses, we can reduce the dependency on HAP. However, we simply have to get far more supply. To be fair-----

Time is up.

Let us be honest. The Deputy's party and others on local councils up and down the country have opposed housing programmes and projects. The Deputy has opposed them because it did not fit his utopian ideal as to what constitutes a housing development.