Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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Economic demand is people who have money to buy. I am trying to turn putative demand into actual financial demand, and that will drive supply. The financial demand is being driven by giving people the wherewithal to put the deposit together. I hear anecdotally, although I cannot prove it, that it is beginning to move already. Planning permission is being sought for extra houses and sites are being opened that were not opened even at the end of the summer, particularly in Dublin. The problem arises around the country as well. We will tease it out further when discussing amendments and so forth. Self-builds in rural areas are a different matter. People still have the financial problem and they still have to finance the houses, but the triggers for getting the money will have to be modulated differently. Not everybody who builds a one-off house in rural Ireland hires a contractor. Many houses in rural areas are built by direct labour. Direct labour works. It will apply to those houses as well.

I believe the housing market is correcting. This year 16,000 houses might be built and next year it will be 20,000. The target, if one were to flat-line it, is 25,000 per year but obviously we will have to go beyond that to make up for the under-achievement over the last number of years. The market is correcting. It is not a desperate case, but I believe this scheme is worth trying. I am not saying there will not be some dead weight in it. There is dead weight in most tax schemes, but we try to keep the dead weight to a minimum and hope we get the maximum effect. I believe we will house many young couples through this.

That is my case and I would like to have the members' support.