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

-----but I will double-check that. As I said earlier, the Government does not want to see family homes being bought up by investment funds. That is not the case at all. It is something we think is undesirable socially and economically. That is why we changed the law in 2021 to stop this happening. It does not apply to old permissions. This is an old permission from 2019. The Deputy's contention is that increasing stamp duty to 17% will solve the problem but she does not know that. A rate of 17% might not be enough or it might have other unintended consequences that she has not thought about and that would do harm to people and businesses. That is why it is important to give very careful consideration to any tax changes.

See this speech in context