Pa Daly
Question:464. Deputy Pa Daly asked the Minister for Finance the number of drawdowns from the help-to-buy scheme in County Kerry in each of the years 2016 to 2020 and to date in 2021. [18234/21]
View answerWednesday, 21 April 2021
Questions (464)
Written answers
The Help To Buy (HTB) scheme is designed to assist first-time buyers with the deposit required to purchase or self-build a new house or apartment to live in as their home.
HTB has a two main stages: the application stage and the claim stage. Compliant taxpayers who complete a HTB application are provided with an application number and a summary of the maximum relief available to them under the incentive. A mortgage provider, broker, qualifying contractor or solicitor can use this summary to verify the relief available to the applicant, for the purposes of mortgage approval or drawdown, or signing a house purchase contract.
An application will progress to the claim stage where the applicant decides to purchase a property that is eligible for the scheme. Many applications may never progress to the claim stage because the applicant does not purchase a property or purchases a property not eligible for the scheme.
Claims made cannot be approved and paid until the qualifying contractor, or the solicitor acting on behalf of self-builder, has verified the claim. Claims are approved by Revenue in the vast majority of cases but at any given time there will be a number of pending claims awaiting approval.
I am advised by Revenue that annual and monthly statistics on the Help to Buy (HTB) scheme are published on their website. Both reports provide a geographical breakdown of approved HTB claims, including data in relation to County Kerry. This data is summarised below:
|
Year |
Approved claims (Kerry) |
|
2021* |
17 |
|
2020 |
101 |
|
2019 |
83 |
|
2018 |
42 |
|
2017** |
46 |
* Up to end Q1 (latest data available)
** The 2017 figure includes approved retrospective claims made in 2017 in respect of the period 19 July 2016 to end 2016, as provided for in the relevant legislation.
In addition, monthly statistics on the HTB are also available and published at:
https://www.revenue.ie/en/corporate/information-about-revenue/statistics/tax-expenditures/htb/htb-monthly.aspx with data up to March 2021 included.