Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Minister acknowledges that many people cannot switch so there is an issue of fairness. Even if somebody can switch, and the Minister says he is introducing the €80,000 limits because such people have a lower loan-to-value ratio and can switch, that does not mean they are going to get a lower interest rate. That is not the case. They have already absorbed this increase in the first instance. Even if they are switching to a fixed rate, they would switch to a fixed rate that is higher than it would have been a number of years ago.

There is no logic whatsoever for doing what the Minister is doing. I think it is an attempt by the Minister to try to present himself as being different. We have had Private Members’ business where the Minister argued against this and his Government argued against this. The Minister used to say that introducing mortgage interest relief would cost X amount, which was based on the old mortgage interest relief that used to be there. That is not what Sinn Féin argued for and it is unlike what the Minister, Deputy McGrath, used to campaign for. Instead of mortgage interest relief that did not have a limit of €1,500 but multiples of that, and did not have 30% as a portion, the Minister was arguing for 100% back in 2016. He argued for that at a time when the ECB rate was zero. Now, he is in the driving seat. He is the Minister for Finance and not only is he bringing forward a less limited proposal, but he is actually going to exclude 137,000 families.

The Minister knows this because I am sure he, like any Deputy, is getting the same letters from the same people who, as he puts it, fall on the wrong side of this relief. These are people the Minister has abandoned and whom the Deputies who will come into the Chamber in a minute will decide to abandon. They will vote to abandon them. They will vote to tell 137,000 people who have seen their mortgage interest go up last year that they are not going to support them. That is the vote those Deputies are going to do in the next few minutes and there is no reason for it. The resources are there, it is once-off and it is targeted on the basis that the other 70,000 who are in that category with a balance of less than €80,000 did not see their interest increase so therefore they should not get any support. That is what this is about. It is not a matter of falling on the wrong side, as if people tripped and had an accident. There is no accident here. The Minister is consciously making a decision that he is going to do nothing for these individuals. He is saying to the Dáil the Government is not going to do anything for these 137,000 people in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis. The Government is going to tell them they are on their own.

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