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

She can also acknowledge that there has been a 40% increase in the number of apartments built in the first quarter of this year compared with last year. She may wish to acknowledge as well that the number of new apartments built is double what it was three years ago and five times what it was five years ago. At regional level, it is the south-west region, covering counties Cork and Kerry, that has seen the biggest increase.

With regard to mortgages, I understand that many people are seeing big increases in their mortgage payments, particularly people who have tracker mortgages.

They are receiving letters in the post, every couple of weeks at this stage, from the bank, telling them that their mortgage has gone up. Somebody with a mortgage of maybe €250,000 has seen an increase of about €500 a month in their mortgage payment. That is a lot of money, even for somebody on a good income, so I absolutely understand the impact that is having on a lot of households. But tax measures are a matter for the budget, and when it comes to the budget we will consider all the different suggestions and ideas for tax concessions, and there will be a tax package in the budget but it will not be possible to include everything in it. It is noteworthy that in Sinn Féin's alternative budget produced by Deputy Doherty, only back in September, mortgage interest relief was not included, even though mortgage interest rates were going up at the time and the ECB signalled that there would be significant further rises. When Sinn Féin had to make choices, it chose not to include mortgage interest relief in its package. When it comes to September-October, when we have a budget to put together, there will be a tax package and we will consider mortgage interest relief as part of that tax package, but we have to consider all the other proposals that come forward for tax relief too.

We also do need to bear in mind the context. Average mortgage rates in Ireland, which had been high by European standards, are now at the lower level, by European standards. We also need to bear in mind that we have had a very prolonged period of low interest rates, almost unprecedented in history. Deputy McDonald says the measures Sinn Féin proposes are time bound, but she does not say when the end point is, because she cannot predict that mortgage interest rates are going to go down again. We had a lot of people for a very long period of time who had the benefit of very low interest rates. Now interest rates are coming back up to something quite close to the historical average and we need to be honest with people about that and not say that things are just time bound. We cannot guarantee people that interest rates are going to go back down to 1% or 0% again. That might not happen.

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