Ms Clare Costello:

I thank the Deputy for the question. The Minister has outlined his rationale for the €80,000 threshold during the course of the debate on the Finance Bill. On our side, we would have looked at the data and discussed the thresholds with the Central Bank. One thing to note is that approximately 137,000 mortgage accounts fall below that €80,000 threshold. A number of those would still be eligible for the relief because the relief looks at one's mortgage balance as a whole, so if people have a top-up mortgage or if some of their mortgage is fixed and some is variable, the relief will look at those as a whole. Because of their nature, those lower account balances may be more likely to be joined with another balance. They will be able to avail of it if the overall mortgage balance is over €80,000. If it is just a single mortgage below €80,000, however, then, like any arbitrary threshold, they will be out of it. That is the nature of a threshold.