Mr. Barry Quinlan:

On eligibility and priority, we have heard a lot of feedback on how society has changed and on the need for schemes to be able to cater for new household formation. As the Senator observed, there is some allowance for marital breakdown. We can consider further eligibility criteria. Predominantly, these schemes are aimed at first-time buyers. Capacity in output is limited but we would welcome the committee's feedback on targeting schemes beyond first-time buyers.

On the cost rental equity loan scheme, the Minister announced the first 400 units today, which will be the first cost rental units in the State, in the Enniskerry Road development, which is led by Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council. That scheme was oversubscribed.

As Senator Cummins said, there are a number of other very good proposals within that, and I am in discussion with the Minister regarding them. I think he would be minded to try to support other proposals if possible. I think the intention would be to try to do that if we could, but at the moment it is fully subscribed. The €35 million that was allocated in budget 2021 has been fully allocated and is supported by a further €100 million in loan financing from the Housing Finance Agency.

The shared equity scheme is a market-based scheme. It is one element of the affordable proposals coming forward. It is designed to try to boost affordability and to help people to buy in the immediate term. As well as boosting realisable demand in the short term, it would lead to a future increased supply of housing, but that will not happen unless the people who can buy the homes are there.

We have done a significant amount of research on this, dealing with our own internal stakeholders in Ireland like the Housing Agency and the Housing Finance Agency, and we also met Homes England. We discussed in detail the experience in the UK, which was that the National Audit Office found that it did not hugely inflate prices on a like-for-like basis in terms of buying the same home before or after the scheme and it did lead to an increase in supply. As I said to Deputy Ó Broin, we are working on the final details of the scheme. We very much take those points on board. They are the key risks in a scheme like this. We are trying to work through the detail of the scheme to mitigate those types of risk in terms of putting a cap on the price of the homes that could be bought to ensure to the greatest extent possible that we mitigate against inflation. We have seen and heard that criticism and we have taken it on board as an important piece of feedback. We are endeavouring to mitigate against that in the detailed design of the schemes because, obviously, that is not the objective of the scheme.