Help To Buy Scheme PQ Response

QUESTION

To ask the Minister for Finance the annual anticipated number of recipients of the help to buy scheme in 2020 and 2021; the anticipated median payment under the scheme; and the anticipated expenditure per annum.
REPLY



The number of recipients, and associated tax cost, of the Help to Buy (HTB) scheme in 2020 and 2021 depends on a wide range of factors, such as market conditions, housing supply, amount of income tax paid in previous years by the applicants etc. It is therefore not possible to estimate the take-up in these years.

On the basis of the projected outturn for 2019, my Department estimated that the Exchequer cost of extending the measure beyond the original sunset clause of 31 December 2019, could be of the order of €100m per annum for each of the next two years, provided current trends persist.  

I am advised by Revenue that the most recent data on cost and uptake indicates that between January 2019 and end November 2019, some 5,933 HTB claims were approved at a cost to the Exchequer of €93.9 million; these figures are broadly in line with the projections made by Department in advance of Budget 2020. 

The Deputy may be interested in detailed figures on the HTB scheme from its introduction to date which are available on the Revenue website at the following link: https://www.revenue.ie/en/corporate/information-about-revenue/statistics/tax-expenditures/index.aspx.