Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

It is difficult to understand the commitment of the Minister and the Government to the help-to-buy scheme, because it is not just the political Opposition that has been critical of it but pretty much every mainstream economist and economic thinktank. Just about everybody is saying this does not make any sense and that it will contribute to house price inflation. Like Deputy Doherty, I hate the term "deadweight", one of these technocratic phrases that are thrown around without people knowing what they mean in many cases. In any event, the money is not really getting to the people who need it, and it is difficult to understand the Minister's commitment to it.

People are caught in an absolutely desperate position between, on the one hand, rents that are off the Richter scale - my area is especially blighted with this, given rents there are the highest of anywhere in the country, with average figures, which increase every month at this point, running at about €2,500 a month - and, on the other hand, taking a risk of buying a house for in excess of €600,000 in my area, where house prices are also among the highest anywhere in the country. This applies even to the affordable housing. I cannot wait until we see the figures for affordable houses in my area because they are, effectively, just a discount on the market price.

Even in places such as Cherrywood, where the State has put a lot of money into the largest residential development in the entire State, we still do not know, years after lots of local infrastructure housing activation fund, LIHAF, funding has gone in, how much affordable housing we are getting and how much it will cost because we cannot square the circle with the level of house prices in the area. Any discount, even a substantial one, on those kinds of market prices is still going to be totally unaffordable, and that is for the "affordable" housing where the State has put in a lot of money to finance infrastructure and so on.

That is the background. The problem is house prices, the cost of housing. Taking steps that encourage people to get onto the ladder for mortgaging themselves up to the hilt for house prices that are off the wall echoes the madness that led to the most recent crash. When we add to that interest rates beginning to rise and expected to continue rising, these are the ingredients with which we could see a shocking repeat of what went before, with all the consequences that would entail. What has to be done, and all resources and tax measures need to be applied to this, is that we bring down the cost of housing. Anything that is not doing that or, worse, that is driving up the cost of housing is a mistake, even if people in their desperation think this is a way for them to get onto the ladder. The question is whether they are going to be caught, as so many people were the last time, with-----