John Cummins (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I referred to the three schemes in Waterford, but if I take the point more generally in terms of turnkey affordable purchase across the board, Cork has sought expressions of interest from developers to engage with it in order to provide units. There is a difficulty there with the structure. We want to try to de-risk the State's involvement in one sense because of what happened in the past regarding shared equity. In developing such a project, the end result must be that it leads to a direct sales purchase to the homeowner. The reason for that is laudable because the person involved has to be able to avail of the help-to-buy scheme, which is worth €30,000, and that will very much assist them. However, the difficulty is that the developer who is developing the affordable purchase unit for the State and for the ultimate purchaser is probably, at best, getting lending at 10%, with 1% in and 1% out. Is there not a mechanism to bring low-cost finance to those projects that have been approved for affordable purchase delivery? I do not know where that question sits, but it is probably for both sets of witnesses to answer.