Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will begin with the landlord tax and I will make no comment on decisions I may or may not make on budget day. I will only offer a general observation that a challenge we have at present is the decreasing number of landlords who provide rental accommodation, and any decision to increase taxation in this sector would have to take account of this.

With regard to employers' PRSI, what the Deputy does not take into account in his analysis is that while we may have a low rate of employers' PRSI compared with countries the Deputy mentioned, we also have a jobs market that has responded with great speed to create new jobs. I contend that the employers' PRSI rate and the confidence people have regarding what it will be in the future has been a very important ingredient in the speed of job creation, which the Deputy would have argued would have been impossible a number of years ago.

With regard to homelessness and the housing market, the Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, and the Taoiseach have already said we know we need to provide more homes. We know we need to create an environment in which there is more supply of more homes, and we will look to make further progress in this area on budget day and beyond. In addition to this, each day we see 80 individuals begin to access housing solutions that make a big difference to their lives. If we look at the amount of funding we spend on homelessness, we will spend just under €100 million this year on emergency services alone for people who are homeless. This represents a 50% increase on where we have been in recent years. One person being homeless and living in an alley or sleeping on a street is not acceptable to us and we will look at all steps we can continue to take to deal with this.