Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I would like to expand that point about the drop in the loan-to-value ratio down to 70%. Consider somebody who is buying a house at €400,000. Under current Central Bank rules and without any exemptions being in place they would need a deposit of €58,000 but somebody who had a loan-to-value ratio of 70%, would already have savings of €120,000 and €20,000 of that could come from the help-to-buy scheme. Would the witness acknowledge that this drop in the loan-to-value ratio is providing a grant of €20,000 into the back pockets of people who can nearly double the amount of savings that are required under the Central Bank's rules?