Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

If I could sit down with the officials, it would be very useful. To put it very simply without going into any of the detail, let us say rent in Dublin is about €1,500 a month now and for most the costs probably amount to about €500 a month. A lot of them are on tracker mortgages so the interest payments are reasonably low for now. With regard to the worked examples I have looked at, on €1,500 a month, we could probably take off about €500 a month on tax deductibles. That leaves us with about €1,000 taxable income. Over 12 months, that is €12,000 taxable at the marginal rate, which is €6,000. That is more or less how it is working out. From the examples I am getting from the people who are coming to me and showing me their figures, the ball park figure is €4,000, €5,000, €6,000, €7,000 or €8,000. It is material enough that they will either try to avoid it, leave the country, stay where they are or will just never be able to afford a deposit. They will never be able to put it together.