Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The scheme is working very well. We will consider the proposal. We want to make sure we are not incentivising sales and we must be careful about that. We have had issues in a small number of instances where people know the State is purchasing the properties and the price has gone way above what the market price would be. The Deputy will appreciate that we have to be careful about how we approach those types of things. When a local authority is buying a property, we must be still be aware of value for money. Rightly, the committee members would bring me before the committee if some properties were bought for way above the market price. Unfortunately, we have seen a small number of instances of that happening, although not in the main. The vast majority of people who have interacted with the scheme have done so in good faith.

It is important to say those targets were only baseline allocations that were set. Dublin city, for example, had an allocation of 400. It has 595 right now.