Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire (Cork South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

In the midst of a cost-of-living crisis where ordinary workers and families are struggling to get by, mortgage holders are seeing a large increase in their interest costs as a result of interest rate hikes by the ECB. The hike we saw last week was the fifth since July, meaning borrowers will be paying thousands of euro more in interest this year. Others are likely to see their interest rates increase in the current period. Tá daoine faoi bhrú dochreidte agus tá siad anois ag féachaint ar chostais ag éirí níos mó.

What Sinn Féin is proposing in this motion is affordable, sensible and necessary. This is the right time to introduce targeted and temporary mortgage interest relief. The Minister will be well familiar with the struggles and challenges people are facing. Deputies across the House talk to families every week. The Minister knows all about budgeting from his role. Very few families can comprehend how to budget for an increased cost of up to €2,000. That is a large hole in a family's finances and means major decisions have to be made - bills potentially going unpaid and treatments or other needs being missed out on because of these large extra costs. For some, the increase could be close to €3,000.

This issue affects a large number of people. Almost 200,000 households are on tracker mortgages, 129,000 are on standard variable rate mortgages, and 113,000 mortgage accounts are with non-banks and vulture funds and are particularly vulnerable to this situation.

The Minister has previously taken a great interest in the issue of mortgage interest relief. In 2015, he described it as "a very important support for families". He also stated: "The process of withdrawing it from existing homeowners at the same time as they are subject to a residential property tax highlights a Government that is pursuing policies that are making home ownership increasingly unaffordable for families". Although his comments were made in a different context - the current context is more severe in some respects - he believed at the time that mortgage interest relief was necessary. It is necessary in this targeted way now. I urge him to listen to people in our constituency and elsewhere who urgently need this help and not to delay it.

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