Brian Hayes (Fine Gael)

I welcome the Minister to the House. I support Senator Terry's contribution. I wish to raise a related point which has been raised by some figures in the industry, and I would be grateful if the Minister would reply.

The current threshold for first-time buyers is €317,500 and no stamp duty applies to a home bought at that price or lower. The case I wish to raise involves a first-time buyer who purchased a house for €317,000, which was just under the threshold and no stamp duty applied. However, the buyer had to pay €3,000 for carpets and other fixtures attached to the house. When this was added to the sale price, it brought the total price to €320,000 and stamp duty applied.

Can we not put in place a buffer zone to ensure stamp duty does not apply when a first-time buyer is caught in such a situation? I have been reassured by the person who brought this to my attention that this is not an academic example but actually happened. A first-time buyer was caught in the stamp duty regime because the additional cost he had to pay for curtains, carpets and the like was added to the cost of the house and gave a combined sale price of €320,000. We need to ensure this does not happen.

I was asked to put the case on the record of the House and to get the response of the Minister. I want to know whether a more benign view could be taken in respect of the current regime in order that such first-time buyers are not caught with the duty, where the intention is they would not be caught. I appreciate some movement was made in this regard two budgets back, and more recently, but there are still examples of people being caught when they should not be.