Vol. 503 No. 3
101 Mr. J. Bruton asked the Minister for Finance if he has considered the recommendation of the first report on the Oireachtas Joint Committee on the Family that a special tax concession be introduced in the first year of marriage; and his views in this regard. [8483/99]
The first report of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on the Family, published in February 1996, "recommended that consideration be given to some form of marriage gratuity as a means of assisting in setting up a family home". There are already a number of reliefs and grants which can be of considerable assistance to newly married couples. These include: the £3,000 grant for first time new house purchasers; 100 per cent mortgage interest relief for first time mortgage holders, for the first five years of a mortgage, up to the ceiling of £5,000 per annum in the case of a married couple; and availability of joint assessment for income tax purposes for a married couple; this enables one spouse to avail of the unutilised portion of both the allowances and standard band of the other spouse.
I do not have any proposals to introduce the type of additional gratuity recommended by the joint committee.
