Gabija Gatavecaite

Well, I mean, it's unbelievable, isn't it?

Soaring house prices have turned the average Irish homeowner.

into a millionaire, and it's the second annual Wealth in Ireland report.

The wealth managing firm Fordell found that the net household wealth of homeowners has more than doubled from €480,000 to €1 million in the past decade, and homeowners percent 97% of the country's €1.4 million net.

trillion wealth while tenants have an average wealth of 70 000 euro and control 41 billion so of course if you have a house specifically even if the house maybe hasn't passed down through generations that your family bought for maybe a couple of yeah now you may be you may be living in the house but you don't own it until you've paid off the mortgage well this bank owns most of it most of the time

And on paper, you are seen to be incredibly wealthy and even a millionaire.

But, you know, you didn't pay you or your parents or maybe even your grandparents didn't pay anywhere near a million.

Yes, and we have seen the government cut inheritance tax in recent budgets.

And this is particularly heralded by Fianna Gael, of course, and Simon Harris, the finance minister.

He will no doubt be keen to cut it.

It was actually Sean Canney who raised the issue at a coalition leaders meeting on Monday night with Micheál Martin and Simon Harris.

He said the family should be able to pass on

a business, a farm or other assets to the next generation without being unduly penalised, according to a Coalition source and a Fine Gael source saying that the Honesta understands that the burden that inheritance tax can place on families seeking to pass on a farm or a home to the next generation, he has consistently said there are fairness issues in the current system and that these deserve consideration.

Now, cuts to inheritance tax are usually quite expensive and the question is...

Who do they benefit?

And do those people need a tax cut?

When, Pat, we're talking about very high housing costs, very high electricity costs and so on.

Yes.

I mean, where is the fairness there?

So that is probably a fair.