Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

This will increase the maximum monthly relief available by about €33 and €66, respectively, bringing it to €166 per month for a single person and €333 per month for a married couple or widowed person. These moves are appropriate in ensuring additional support for a hard-pressed segment of the housing market and should provide the necessary direction and certainty.

Housing Market

Taxation policy must always take account of market conditions and it should be designed to support, rather than hinder, the achievement of policy objectives. This is a matter for consideration by any Minister for Finance in respect of every budget.

Over recent months, the dynamics of the housing market have changed fundamentally. A natural and welcome slowdown in property price inflation has been compounded by higher interest rates, tighter credit control and changing consumer sentiment as well as uncertainty about the global economic outlook and turmoil in international credit markets. I have made it clear on many occasions that any stamp duty reform which I would contemplate would have to be affordable and would have to support, rather than potentially destabilise, the market.

Any number of proposals have been mentioned in the past that have ranged from the illogical to the impractical. They have included proposals that were overly complex and costly, that sought to push an additional stimulus into a market that did not need it at that point, or sought to introduce changes over a number of years that would simply have created further uncertainty.

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