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

We will always consider good proposals from other people and the Opposition. I think we have shown that when it comes to housing policy. We have taken a number of steps in recent years and months that we might not have done previously. We will always consider these things but we must be careful around demand-side measures. I am not against demand-side measures but we must be careful because of the risk of putting up property prices.

I did read David McWilliams’s article. He is a very good commentator and a very interesting one but I disagree with his analysis on this occasion. I will tell the Deputy why. We have done five things in the budget and before the budget that I think do make a difference and they were not accounted for in the article. First, we approved a €5 billion budget for housing. That will allow us to break all records in the provision of new public housing next year, social, cost rental and affordable. We will break all records next year because of that budget. Second, we increased the rent credit to €750 for a single person and €1,500 for a couple, putting roughly a month’s rent back in people’s pockets. Third, we extended the help-to-buy scheme. It helps many first-time buyers to get their deposit. They would not even be able to bid for a house were it not for help-to-buy and I am glad we extended that for another year. We also put in place tax breaks for small landlords to encourage them to stay in the market. That had been advocated by the Regional Group only a few months ago. Mr. McWilliams suggested that we should cut development levies. We have done more than that; they are gone. We got rid of them a few months ago. If anybody says that this Government is only interested in demand-side measures, it is totally incorrect. We have supply-side measures too. The suspension of the development levies is an example of that. The grants to renovate and do up derelict properties have had 4,000 applications already. That is another example of a supply-side measure. The reforms we are making to the planning system are a further example of supply-side measures.

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