Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I have a couple of questions for the Minister. I will pick up on the point he made in respect of amendment No. 9. I raised this matter with his officials during the technical briefing. The Minister mentioned that there needs to be a cut-off age but there does not. If the principle behind the rent credit is to support renters, there are two ways to do it. A refundable tax credit, which the Minister is not in favour of, is one. A way to address the issue that many students would not have a tax liability and are paying high rents, particularly in our cities, is to allow their parents to claim that credit where they are paying the rent. There is absolutely no reason why there is a cut-off age. There is a cut-off for SUSI grants because a different process pertains when one is over the age of 23. Consider a mature student who is older than 23, who is starting college and does not have a tax liability. That person might be paying €1,500 for a bunk bed in the city. There is no reason for such a person to be excluded from this credit. There is no reason for an age limit. The Minister has already restricted it to students in full-time education and that should suffice. It would have to be shown that the parents of the student in question were paying the rent and so on. If the parents are not paying the rent and the student has a tax liability, he or she can apply for it themselves.

I do not understand the rationale behind it. I encourage the Minister to deal with that. It is probably small in number in reality but there is no reason for it to be there. If the 23-year age limit was not there, I cannot see what big impact it would have at all. It probably would have an impact for some of those mature students who do not have a tax liability. The Minister has argued against this with me for years, as he will acknowledge. Previously he said it would very likely be a transfer of Exchequer funding directly to landlords, which would not have the intended effect of reducing the cost pressure on tenants. How come there is no longer likely to be a transfer of Exchequer funding directly to landlords, as the Minister claimed last year and the year before?