Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I genuinely believe that this issue, which is forcing house prices upwards, is putting house ownership beyond a generation. People who are younger than me tell me that they will never aspire to own their own houses because of how property prices are at this point in time. It only suits one cohort of individuals, and that is the developers.

I put it to the Minister of State that he is misleading the Dáil. He did not name me, but I presume he was referring to me when I said that the information is that the majority of those who benefit from the help-to-buy scheme do not require the help-to-buy scheme to reach the minimum deposit requirements set down by the Central Bank. The Minister of State said that was wrong and that the scheme was targeted. He mentioned a response to a parliamentary question. I have not seen the response. The Minister of State obviously has. However, I have read the Revenue report of October which gives us the monthly statistics on the help-to-buy scheme. It shows that there have been 4,487 claims on the scheme at this point. Some 1,408 of those had a loan to value in excess of 90%. All of the rest were below 90%, falling between 90% and 70%, which is the threshold for entering the scheme. This means that of the 4,487 claims in that report, 3,079 of those who received the money did not need the incentive to make up the loan to value ratio. That equates to 68.6% of the total. It is important that the Minister of State puts the record straight and deals with the facts and statistics, if he wants to rely on those statistics. I am sure that the departmental officials can give the Minister of State the Revenue report. It is produced monthly, and from my memory, on each month that it has been produced since the start of this year it has always shown that the majority of beneficiaries of this scheme did not require the help-to-buy scheme to make up the deposit in terms of loan to value.

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