Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy. The Central Bank of Ireland publishes mortgage statistics on a quarterly basis. The most recent statistics indicate there were around 719,500 primary dwelling mortgage accounts at the end of June last with an outstanding balance of €98.7 billion. The Central Bank estimates that around 27% of primary dwelling mortgages with credit institutions are on a tracker interest rate and a further 20% are on a non-tracker variable rate or where the interest rate is fixed for up to one year.

Mortgage interest tax relief was phased out on a gradual basis from 2009 to 2020. The decision to abolish mortgage interest tax relief was taken in the wake of the financial crisis, with the cost of the relief being one of the influencing factors. Mortgage interest relief cost over €700 million in 2008.

In the recent budget, the Government introduced measures, including a large range of one-off measures, which will help families and households with the increasing cost of living. These measures included a tax package of over €1.1 billion. Therefore, I do not have any plans to reintroduce mortgage interest tax relief at this time.

Prior to its curtailment and eventual abolition, as was pointed out by the 2009 Commission on Taxation, in 2005 the top two income deciles accounted for close to half of the tax forgone through mortgage interest tax relief. As the European Central Bank, ECB, has changed its monetary policy since the summer, the average interest rate on new Irish mortgages has broadly held steady and the difference between here and the Eurozone average has declined.

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