Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

This provision relates directly to the confidence and supply agreement which I was involved in negotiating back in 2016. Without such a provision in the agreement, mortgage interest relief would have been removed totally for everyone at the end of 2017 and there would have been a cliff-edge effect. All of the benefit people had been enjoying would have been lost. On average, it was worth approximately €600 per annum. In the 2016 general election Fianna Fáil was the only party of which I am aware that campaigned on the basis that mortgage interest relief would be retained and provided for in the budgetary and fiscal projections made at the time. I would have loved to have seen it retained at a rate of 100%, but the best we could negotiate two and a half years ago was that it would be retained at a reduced rate and tapered over a three year period. That was better than allowing it to disappear overnight, which was the legal position as programmed in the Finance Acts up to that point. The tapering represented an improvement. We would have loved to have kept the relief at the rate of 100%, but that was not possible.

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