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

I thank the Deputy. We all know what happened here when we had a banking and financial crisis ten or 11 years ago. The banks, the construction industry and housing supply collapsed, and as a consequence of inadequate supply, houses prices started rising again and are now very high and out of reach for many people. It is a social disaster, quite frankly, that people in their 20s and 30s who would have been able to own a home 20, 30 or 40 years ago simply cannot now. One of the biggest challenges facing the Government is turning that around, increasing supply and putting in place schemes to enable people in their late 20s and 30s to be able to buy a home, just as they used to be able to do not that long ago. That is something we are working on very closely. Anything involving tax treatment is a budgetary matter and would be considered by the Minister for Finance.

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