Noel Rock (Dublin North West, Fine Gael)
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98. To ask the Minister for Finance if he will provide historic data held by his Department to provide comparative reference points (details supplied). [35360/19]

Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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Officials from the Department of Finance and the ESRI published a paper in 2016 titled “Scenarios and Distributional Implications of a Household Wealth Tax in Ireland”, within which the table referenced by the Deputy was presented. The data are drawn from the first wave of the Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS), which the CSO carried out in 2013 and results of which were published in 2015. The second wave of the HFCS is due to be published later in 2019.

Historic data on aggregate household net wealth is available in the Central Bank of Ireland’s published Quarterly Financial Accounts. The latest data shows that the net worth of Irish households reached a new high of €772 billion in Q1 2019, equating to roughly €444,000 per household. This analysis shows that the rise in net financial assets held by household was driven primarily by increased value and volume of investment in financial assets. It also shows that household debt fell by €0.6 billion relative to Q4 2018. At €136.9 billion, household debt is now at the lowest level since 2005.