Of all the kites being flown about the budget, tax breaks for landlords is the most outrageous. Never before have rents or homelessness been so high. Never before has the number of adults stuck living in their childhood bedrooms been so high. Home ownership rates are at their lowest level in more than 50 years and the Government's answer to this litany of catastrophe is tax breaks for landlords. According to the most recent Residential Tenancies Board, RTB rent index, the average rent around the country is now a record €1,550. In Dublin, rents are in the stratosphere. It now costs, on average, €2,100 per month to rent in Dublin. That is more than €25,000 per year. Does the Taoiseach know how much the gross annual minimum wage is? It is €22,916, more than €2,000 lower than rental costs in Dublin. Yet, we are being told that the problem in the rental sector is that landlords are not making enough money and that their passive income should be taxed at a lower rate than workers, who are paying exorbitant rents and cannot afford to buy their own homes.

What planet is the Taoiseach living on? Has he just completely given up on trying to resolve the housing disaster? Is this measure an acknowledgment that his Government has run out of ideas? There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that landlords are leaving the market because of their tax treatment. There is none. In fact, according to research by the RTB, 49% of landlords who left the market said nothing would have stopped them from leaving. They were leaving because house prices are at a record high and they wanted to get the maximum price for their investment.

The Government keeps on claiming that there is an exodus of landlords from the rental system. This narrative was fuelled by a fall in the number of tenancies registered with the RTB. However, the census tells a very different story. According to the census, there were 330,000 households in the private rental sector, an increase of 7% from 2016, and 54,000 more than the most recent figures from the RTB.

If the Taoiseach wants to do something about tax treatment in the rental sector, why does he not do something about the pittance being paid by vulture funds? We know that tax paid by Irish real estate funds, IREFs, collapsed from an effective rate of 17.9% in 2020 to just 5.9% in 2021 and yet nobody in government seems to know why. Given all of this, how can the Taoiseach possibly justify tax breaks for landlords?

First of all, no decisions have yet been made on the budget, either on the tax or welfare packages - but there will be tax and welfare packages - or the general spending package. Those decisions are still being discussed at Government level. A proposal will be put to Cabinet on budget day and then subsequently to the House. That is the procedure and the process that we follow.

What the Deputy and I agree on is that rents in Ireland are too high. What do we do about it? The rent pressure zones are in place. We see from the research now the difference that has made. Existing tenants, for several years now, have seen increases of between 0% and 2% or 4%, and incomes rising at the same or higher rate. We see huge investment in social housing because more social housing for more people means fewer people having to rent in the rental market, and less need for the housing assistance payment, HAP. We have cost rental, a new form of housing in Ireland, for the very first time. It was initiated by the former Minister, former Deputy Eoghan Murphy, and is very much being delivered now by the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Deputy Darragh O'Brien. That is there for people who do not qualify for social housing but can now get affordable rent. We are going to need a lot more of that in the years and decades to come. We also have the rent credit in the budget, which helped people with their rental costs. As part of our budget considerations we will have to see whether we can increase that or not.

Deputy O'Callaghan mentioned the census, and it is absolutely fair for him to use figures as he chooses. All politicians will be a little bit selective in the figures they use. I am going to be selective too.

It is the census.

Yes but there is a lot of detail in the census. I will give the Deputy some figures from the census.

Go on.

The number of people in social housing, and the number of families who benefit from social housing - and I do not mean HAP or RAS - has gone up by 40,000 in the past ten years. That is 40,000 more families who benefit from social housing than was the case ten years ago. I know the population has gone up. The percentage has also gone up to about 10%. Deputy O'Callaghan's party has consistently alleged, for years now, that this Government and previous Governments are running down social housing and were not committed to it. The census shows that this claim is untrue.

During his time as Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government, the current Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Deputy Simon Coveney, started the social housing programme again. It is now ramping up to the point where we are building more social housing than at any point since the 1970s, and the census shows an increase in the number of people in social housing in raw and percentage terms. That is the main way we are going to get rents under control. More social housing and more cost rental, which again is going to be a big part of future housing policy. There are also measures such as the rent credit, which helps people pay less tax if they are paying high rents.

We all know this idea of tax relief for landlords is being pushed by the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, whose rationale for his housing plan looks increasingly like a game of pin the tail on the donkey.

Random interventions are being stuck in random places while the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government hopes the entire housing system does not collapse. Throwing even more money at landlords is another one of his bad ideas. It is straight from the Fianna Fáil tax breaks for developers handbook. Tax breaks for landlords will not build a single additional home. Not one. Why is the Government not directing all of its energy and resources into the one thing that would make a difference, which is building more affordable homes? We know that not one affordable home was delivered in 2020. Not a single one was delivered in 2021. Only 323 affordable purchase homes were delivered last year and in the first six months of this year, just 101 affordable purchase homes were delivered. That means a grand total of 424 affordable purchase homes have been provided under this Government. That is a drop in the ocean. It is utterly pathetic. Will the Taoiseach abandon plans for tax relief for landlords and instead invest this money in building more affordable homes?

I thank the Deputy. We agree on one point, which is that we need more supply. We need more homes and social housing, and we need more homes that are affordable for people to buy. It is encouraging to see that every week, 700 mortgages are issued to first-time buyers, the highest number since the Celtic tiger period. Perhaps 400 or 500 couples and individuals are now buying their first homes every week. That is the highest number since the Celtic tiger period and that is encouraging. It is difficult for the Deputy to acknowledge that any progress is ever being made but the facts say otherwise. We are acting to bring down rents and increase social housing, as we have been doing for many years. We will do more this year and more again the following year. We are scaling up cost rental as fast as we can because a big part of the future will be providing that option for people who do not qualify for social housing but may struggle to buy or afford to rent.

When the Deputy uses figures and statistics around affordable housing, he is only talking about one intervention by which we make housing more affordable for people. He is not counting the help-to-buy scheme, which his party wants to take away. That would mean considerable numbers of young people having to save for many more years just to get a deposit before they can even bid on a house, never mind what price the house may be. Programmes such as the first home scheme bridge the gap between the mortgage people are approved for and the cost of buying the home. There are also local authority home loans. All those things make housing more affordable for people. What one has to do, if one is being genuine about the situation, is to look at all the people who have got some form of help from the Government to buy their first homes in the past couple of years. There are tens of thousands of such people.