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

I thank the Deputy. The answer to his question is that I will. Helping middle Ireland and middle-income people has always been a priority for me and is a priority for this Government. We have done a lot already in recent years but there is always more to do and I acknowledge that. One of our major priorities in the forthcoming budget is to help middle income people and middle Ireland with the high cost of living. There are a number of different ways in which we can do that. As I often say, any household budget has three elements. There is the amount you get paid, the amount you get to keep after income tax, universal social charge, USC and PRSI, and how far the money goes. That is linked, of course, to the cost of services. That is where we are helping. Pay has gone up. The minimum wage for working people went up by 7.8% this year, higher than the rate of inflation, and many people have got pay increases of, on average, approximately 5% across the economy this year. There will be further increases in pay next year. We can reduce income tax, which we have done in the last couple of budgets, and will do again in this budget. Because it is incremental, people sometimes do not add up how much it has been worth to them but we started reducing income tax and USC in 2014. People earning €40,000 or more today pay €3,000 per year less in income tax and PRSI than they did in 2014. A couple who earn €80,000 between them pay €6,000 less in income tax and USC than was the case if they were earning the same amount of money in 2014. That is the cost of what a left-led government would be to middle income people. It would cost them approximately €3,000 per year and €6,000 per year for a couple. That gap is widening with every budget as we reduce income tax and USC and the left-wing parties vote down our efforts to do so.

The third area with which we help is universal benefits. Middle-income people generally do not qualify for support through means tests because they are over the limits. That is why we have ensured that some of the cost-of-living improvements we have made are universal, such as the reduction in the college contribution costs, the extension of free schoolbooks to all primary schoolchildren without a means test and the reduction in childcare costs, which have reduced fees by approximately 25% in the past year. Middle-income working people are the ones who benefit the most from those measures.

On the issue of mortgages, I represent a constituency full of people who are paying mortgages. It has been a big shock for people who have received ten letters in the post in the past year telling them their mortgages have gone up, particularly for those with tracker mortgages. Even people with modest mortgages of €200,000 or €250,000 are probably paying €500 more per month. That is a big increase and a shock to people. It is, however, coming against a backdrop where we had extremely low interest rates for a prolonged period. That needs to be borne in mind.

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