The average cost of rent in Ireland in December was €1,733 per month. This is according to the latest Daft.ie market report. We know that after tax, the take-home pay for a full-time worker on the minimum wage now stands at just €1,724 per month. This is nearly €10 less than the average monthly rent. We know that rents have more than doubled in the past decade and have jumped nearly 14% in the last year alone. Homes are now unaffordable for so many, and unavailable too as the market is chronically starved of homes. There are now just 1,000 or so homes across the country available for rent, according to Daft.ie. We know that everybody in the State is touched by the housing crisis. Last Thursday evening, we in the Labour Party put forward a set of eight emergency measures. We called on the Government to adopt these measures to enable the Government to urgently address the housing crisis and this chronic shortage of housing supply. It was unfortunate that the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, did not even join us for that debate. We ask that the Taoiseach would now withdraw the countermotion to ensure we do not have a division in the House on the constructive proposals we are putting forward to address the housing crisis as an emergency measure.

I thank the Deputy. Unfortunately we do not have data that are as good as we would like on real rents paid in Ireland. We should have data from the census and also the Residential Tenancies Board data when they come through. There is no doubt that a lot of people are paying very high rents and are struggling to pay them. This is why we brought in the rent credit, for which some 170,000 people have already applied. I encourage those who have not yet applied to do so. The Minister has put down his countermotion and there will be an opportunity to debate it in the House.