Noel Ahern (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail)

If such buyers can get a loan, they do rather well. The group people want to help now are those who bought houses or, in particular, apartments, some years ago and now want to trade up and buy a family home but are in negative equity. We probably cannot do anything very positive for them but at least we are now asking them to pay only 1% if they trade up with their negative equity rather than whatever the rate was - 5%, 7%, 9%, or whatever. This measure goes some way towards rectifying the situation for the group which is most needy at present.

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