Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

The Deputy asked how we can encourage people in the rental sector to buy homes for themselves. Over the past 12 months, I have increased the ceiling on mortgage interest relief from €4,000 to €10,000 for a single person and from €8,000 to €20,000 for a married couple or widowed person. I have provided a means of paying all interest on a mortgage of €400,000 over 35 years at 5%, which I hope will serve as a significant inducement or attraction to many families to regard the purchase of a house, or the taking of equity in their own homes, as a better prospect than staying in the rental market. Nobody wants rents to increase if such increases are likely to cause hard-pressed families to endure additional hardship. I was elected by people in hard-pressed families and elsewhere in the community. I suppose I will have to continue to contend with the repeated jibes of the Deputy about the building industry.

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