Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We have rent pressure zones in Ireland. We introduced them many years ago and the vast majority of people renting in Ireland are covered and protected by them. That means there are increases of between 0% and 4% per year. We have also introduced the rent tax credit and that is a big help for a lot of people.

Next year, it is €750 a year for a single person and €1,500 a year for a couple who are renting together. That, in many cases, is a month's rent back in renters' pockets. Deputy McDonald mentioned some figures that were out in the past couple of days. Those figures show that the average rent paid by somebody in Ireland in an existing tenancy is around €1,300 a month, which is per property, not per renter. It is obviously higher in Dublin and lower outside of Dublin and the major cities. The figures the Deputy specifically referred to relate to new tenancies. New tenancies are properties that are being put on the market and rented out for the first time. Where an existing tenancy is rolled over, the rent pressure zone continues to apply.

Rent pressure zones do not apply to properties being put on the market for the first time. The obvious difficulty with what Deputy McDonald proposes is that if one imposes a rent freeze on a property that is being rented for the first time, it only applies after it has been rented out. That is the difficulty with what the Deputy proposes. The problem that we see in imposing rent freezes for three years, which is Sinn Féin's policy, is that it would almost certainly reduce new supply. What we desperately need in Ireland is new supply of homes of all types, including homes for people to purchase, social housing and also homes for people to rent. Sinn Féin's policy would mean fewer properties being available for people to rent. That might be of benefit to people who are renting already but it would pull up the ladder on people who need to rent for the first time, for example, young people, students who are getting their first job, and new arrivals to this country such as nurses coming to work in our health service, or indeed people coming back from Australia, the UK and places they may have migrated to.

I have good news for Deputy McDonald when it comes to homeownership. We are seeing record numbers of first-time buyers. We have not seen the numbers of first-time buyers that we have seen recently for 16 years. About 500 first-time mortgages are being drawn down every week and about 400 people buy their first home. We have not seen that in 16 years. That is happening because of some of the policies that Government has put forward, including increasing housing supply, reducing the cost of building new homes by getting rid of development levies or suspending them, which Sinn Féin is opposed to, the help to buy scheme, which Sinn Féin is opposed to, giving people their taxes back to help with a deposit when they are buying a new home, and also schemes like first home. These are all things that Sinn Féin would take away from people and Deputy McDonald needs to be honest about that. Sinn Féin is not a party of homeownership. It wants to take away from people all the things that the Government has put in place to help people buy a first home.

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