Today, the Children's Rights Alliance highlighted once again one of the most shameful aspects of the utterly disastrous housing crisis, namely the phenomena of child homelessness and the impact that has on children, on their mental health and on their well-being, and how, as they put it, it deprives and robs children of their precious childhood. The figures are stark. There are now 3,431 children in emergency accommodation. That can be multiplied by several factors if the number of children who have been in and out of homelessness and emergency accommodation over the past number of years is taken into account. A total of 1,609 families are homeless, with family homelessness up by 44% in one year and child homelessness up by 34%. They are shocking figures and it is a shocking failure by the State to look after our most vulnerable people.

As the Children's Rights Alliance highlights, much this is down to the Government's failure to control rents and the yawning gap between rent supports in the form of housing assistance payment, HAP, and other payments that the Government is willing to give, and the actual level of rents. The Government has done absolutely nothing to bridge that gap to give people some prospect of being able to find an affordable rental property when at the same time it has failed to deliver the public and affordable housing that could solve the crisis. The figures are stark. In my office today, we went on daft.ie and checked what rental properties were available in our area. There were 20 two-bedroom properties available. The average rent for those properties was €3,100 with the cheapest being €2,250. There were six three-bedroom properties. The average rent for those six was €4,000 per month, with the cheapest being €2,995. There was one one-bedroom property which, incredibly, is being rented at €3,445.

The HAP rates available to people are a fraction of those rents, leaving no chance for people who are facing the prospect of being evicted through no fault of their own, or who are just looking for accommodation for themselves and their children of being able to afford those rental properties. My question is very simple. If the Taoiseach will not agree to the call we have made to address these matters over the past few weeks, will he now listen to the Children's Rights Alliance who said that he must retain the moratorium on no-fault evictions into homelessness. Will he increase the rent supports available to people so that they have some prospect of affording these shocking rents, if he is not willing to do what he should do, which is to introduce rent controls to make rents affordable for ordinary people?

I thank the Children's Rights Alliance for the work they do. We do not always see eye to eye but we have had very good engagement with them as a Government down the years. I am aware of its Report Card 2023, which was issued today or yesterday. To be fair to the alliance, in the round it gave the Government two As, five Bs, four Cs, four Ds and one E. We did not get two As last year and it is worth noting that the alliance has given the Government two As - one for enacting the Harassment and Harmful Communications and Related Offences Bill, which protects children from some of the things that happen online, and the second for the enactment of the Online Safety and Media Regulation Bill and the establishment of the Online Safety Commissioner by the Minister, Deputy Catherine Martin. There are five Bs in other areas and I will not go into the detail of that. People can read the report for themselves. On the issue of homelessness, the Government got a B in one category and a D-minus in the other. The B is for the development of our national youth homelessness strategy. The D-minus, which is up from an E last year but still bad, is due to a reduction in the number of homeless families. That is because, and I acknowledge this, the number of homeless families has not come down and, indeed, has increased slightly in recent months. That is not at all acceptable or desirable from the part of Government.

On what the Government is doing, I can think of five things we are doing to help people who are facing high rents. We acknowledge that people are facing very high rents particularly in our cities, but not just in our cities. The first is the rent tax credit. More than 170,000 people have claimed this. It is €500 per renter, €1,000 for a couple and €1,500 for three people renting a house in a house share. It is something we can build on in future budgets if the public finances allow. The second is the cost-rental housing, which is now a reality. It started under the last Government and became a reality under this Government and we need to scale it up. I met the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, only yesterday to talk about the ways that we can scale it up. The third is the building of social housing. There were probably more social homes built last year than any year since 1975. Not in my lifetime or perhaps in the Deputy's has there been a Government more committed to building new social housing than this.

The Deputy mentioned a daft.ie report earlier which, on rent pressure zones, pointed out that for existing renters, who are the vast majority of renters and who already have a tenancy, rents rose by 3.6% last year. There is also HAP, and making it available to 16,000 more families and people, by making the changes that we made. I acknowledge there is more to do in this area and we are certainly giving consideration as to what else we can do to help people, particularly by scaling up social housing and the cost-rental housing in the period ahead. The Government had not made a decision on the extension of the eviction ban. We will have to make a decision on that in the next two weeks and we said that we would. As the Deputy knows, there are pros and cons in doing so. It is not a straightforward decision.

There is a way the Deputy can help. We all accept that we cannot solve this housing crisis without more supply and we all accept that it is about more than supply, but we definitely cannot solve it without more supply. I have not objected to a housing development in seven years. I do not have the heart to do it anymore. Developments might not be perfect but they are better than nothing and they can help. Only in the past year between April 2021 and May 2022, the Deputy has objected to 1,315 new homes in his constituency alone. It is not right.

The Taoiseach studiously decided not to answer the questions I raised. To be absolutely clear on that particular point, in the same period I did not oppose and, in many cases, actively supported thousands and thousands of planning applications and the commencement of construction, not least in areas such as Cherrywood, which is the biggest residential development in the country, or Shanganagh, which will be the biggest social housing development in the country. I actively supported and pushed for those developments.

You objected. There are a few Deputies doing that.

Deputy Boyd Barrett without interruption.

In some cases, such as co-living, I object, or I sided with students who opposed unaffordable student accommodation. What the Taoiseach did not do, in his diversionary tactics, was answer the point about whether he will continue to allow families to go into homelessness who have done absolutely nothing wrong. Is he going to let more children and families end up homeless because he decides to stand with landlords rather than the rights and needs of children and families who are faced with the prospect of homelessness?

Time is up now Deputy.

Is the Taoiseach going to raise the rent supports that are available to people, in the absence of bringing in rent controls which should be done in order to deal with these obscene rents-----

Time is up Deputy please.

-----to ensure that there is some prospect for families looking for accommodation affording the rents being charged by the very developers-----

The Deputy is over time.

-----who are charging these rents? That is why I oppose some of their developments.

How many children are living in the developments the Deputy objected to?

I thank the Deputy. I am almost astounded by the Deputy's response. Does he really think he deserves some sort of reward, or thanks, or kudos, for not opposing housing?

For actively supporting it.

We should all be actively supporting the building of additional housing in our communities. He deserves no reward, nor thanks, nor pats on the back for not opposing thousands of new homes in his constituency, or even for supporting them. Between April 2021 and May 2022 he has opposed 1,315 new homes in his constituency. Where would those people be living now Deputy, if he had his way? However, to answer his question, we have not made a decision yet on the extension of the eviction ban. We will make a decision on that quite soon. There are pros and cons to be weighed up. As I mentioned before, 30,000 people come home from abroad to live in Ireland every year. These are Irish citizens coming home. They do not all own houses and apartments but many of them do, more than the Deputy might think, and them not being able to move back into their own houses is a problem. Also, there are people throughout the country who bought an apartment in the city for when their kids go to college. We have to take that into account as well. We will take all these issues into account.

In regard to HAP, we keep the thresholds and the amounts paid under review all the time. They have been increased in the past. It remains under review as to whether to increase them again.