Peter Burke (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the scheme. The alternative is to do nothing and we cannot go down that road. People need assistance to get a mortgage. On 23 October, Mr. Brian Keegan, a director of taxation at the Institute of Chartered Accountants, wrote an interesting article. He said behaviour following schemes that have been introduced on foot of various tax incentives does not always follow the route classic economics dictates that it should. He pointed out a number of examples where behaviour did not follow suit. We should take note of that. This scheme addresses a cohort that cannot access supply at the moment and it is not targeted at all homes. If it applied to all homes, price increases would result. This is a good article, which is written subjectively and goes all through all aspects of the scheme. Pension relief is another example of the benefit being disproportionate to the incentive provided. We can quote different economic indicators, economists and classical economics but it does not always follow and there are loads of examples in this regard.