We all woke up to the news of a depressing daft.ie report this morning. It shows that rents throughout the State are continuing to increase and renters faced a 10% increase over 2021. In some areas, rents are soaring by more than 20%. Before Ministers rush to tell people to shop around, they should know the daft.ie report confirms what ordinary people already know, that is, that there is little to no affordable rental accommodation in most places, while the average rent now stands at €1,524. While the focus this week has been on energy in the context of the cost-of-living crisis, the single most important measure the Government could take for people would be to reduce the cost of accommodation, particularly rents. The rent cap that is in place is not working. We need a ban on rent increases for all existing and new tenancies and the Government needs to put money back in renters' pockets through a refundable tax credit worth one month’s rent.

The Government must also accept its social and affordable rental targets for 2022 are not good enough and lift the ban on councils buying homes with housing assistance payment, HAP, or rental accommodation scheme, RAS, tenants in situ where the landlord is selling up. This is forcing families into homelessness while the properties are then sold to investment funds, which lease the same properties back to the council. The investment funds are laughing at us at this point. We are allowing extortion to happen under our noses. Similarly, the BNP Paribas Real Estate report shows cuckoo funds are outbidding households by a massive premium, paying as much as 32% more for each residence they bought last year.

People are feeling this from all angles and, clearly, the Government is not doing enough. I would like a debate on how we are going to tackle the cost of living from an accommodation perspective.

While Sinn Féin and its friends, the investors, are laughing at renters, the Government is not. The Government is spending €900 million of taxpayers' money to support more than 100,000 renters. On top of that, it has committed €20 billion to increase the social and affordable housing stock and to give people a chance to own their own homes.

Two citizens' assemblies were announced yesterday, one on biodiversity and another on the prospect of a directly elected mayor for Dublin. There should not be a hierarchy of citizens' assemblies. The process works very well, is very constructive and has led to great change in our society. We absolutely need a citizens' assembly on drugs-----