Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thanks the Deputy for raising this very important issue once again. The Government and I are really strong supporters of home ownership. I believe in home ownership and that everyone has the right to shelter and should be able to aspire to owning his or her own home. In Ireland, 71% of people own their homes. That is actually higher than the European average. The figure used to be even higher and I want to see it increase again. It was the norm for a very long time that people in their 20s could afford to buy their own homes. That is now not the case. The average person who can afford to buy his or her own home is now well into his or her 30s and people end up paying rent for a very long time before they can get on the property ladder. As a result, a figure of 71% in respect of home ownership is not good enough for me. I want to see that rise. We are absolutely committed to doing everything we can to increase home ownership again in this State.

Rents are very high in Ireland, in many cases higher than what people would pay if they had a home in terms of their mortgage. That is unusual. Second, a lot of people struggle to raise a deposit, which one needs to buy a home.

There are solutions, and the solutions lie in three areas. They lie in supply and providing more housing of all sorts, they lie in enhancing tenants' rights, and they also lie in helping first-time buyers. Supply is now picking up, with 18,000 new homes built last year, more than any year in the past decade. We anticipate as many as 25,000 new homes of all sorts being built this year - social housing units, but also private homes that people can buy. There will be places that people can rent because people also need places to rent. Everyone is not going to buy. People who move around a lot need to be able to rent.

Second, we are enhancing tenants' rights. The Deputy will be aware of what the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government announced last night with the approval of the Government. We are: extending the rent pressure zones to 2021 in order to ensure that nobody in those areas will be the subject of a rent increase of more than 4%; changing the criteria for rent pressure zones so that they apply in more areas; extending those rules to student accommodation; and - something that I think will help to make a difference - extending notice to quit periods so that if someone is renting and the owner of the house is going to renovate or sell or if a family member is going to move back in, the owner will have to give much more notice of three months, or six in some cases, in order that the person in the house will have much more time than he or she has at present to find somewhere to live. In the current circumstances, if one is asked to vacate, one only has a few weeks to find somewhere else to live. That is not enough time in the current market. These laws will give people much more time to find place to lives.

We are also helping first-time buyers. More than 10,000 people have already been helped through the help-to-buy scheme to raise deposits. That has been a very significant help for 10,000 people. The Government has given them some of their income tax back to help them raise a deposit. Ten thousand people have already been assisted to buy a home through that action.

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