Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy is misinterpreting my response to her question and I hope she is not doing so intentionally. She stated that houses will be unaffordable for such people under this scheme. I am saying that under the scheme such people will be able to afford these houses, as evidenced in the example I gave, whereby the repayments of that couple would be less than one quarter of their income. That is affordable in that context. Some 91% of homes outside the Cork, Galway and greater Dublin areas purchased by first-time buyers in 2017 up to the end of October cost less than the relevant €250,000 cap for the mortgage scheme. That is why this product will be beneficial.

As regards what the Taoiseach said, he was simply stating a matter of fact. People get help from a number of different sources to put together deposits. He did not get such assistance when purchasing his house and was making the point in the context of the Government not wanting a return to 100% mortgages because of how dangerous they are and how they helped to destroy our economy. Under the Rebuilding Ireland home loan scheme, one can use the help-to-buy measure that was previously introduced or prove savings of 3% and verify a gift of 7%. There is flexibility in the scheme to ensure that people are able to avail of it, which is what we want.

The first tranche of available funding is €200 million, which will allow approximately 1,000 people to avail of the scheme. As that draws down to approximately €50 million, the Housing Finance Agency will go back to the market to secure an additional fund which will probably be administered on a slightly higher interest rate likely to be at 2.25% for the 25-year rather than 30-year product. That will be kept under review to monitor its success. The current mortgage market in Ireland is worth approximately €99 billion, while the local authority mortgage market is in the region of €1 billion. The €200 million available under this scheme is only a fraction of the overall market but it will grow if successful and as it grows we will make changes to its administration, depending on feedback. People will be able to apply for loans under the scheme from 1 February. One day after the call centre opening we had to double the number of staff because of the level of interest that was shown. The number of website hits was told to me last night and although I cannot remember it off the top of my head I think one quarter of hits were return visitors. There is much interest in the scheme.