Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will answer them as best I can. I would not have been involved directly in this; it would have been dealt with by the Ministers, Deputies Donohoe, Michael McGrath and Darragh O'Brien.

Speaking to some construction companies and developers in recent weeks, I am aware that they are not happy with this. This is not the scheme that they would have organised or arranged. They would have preferred some sort of tax break or tax incentive, and they are not particularly enamoured of the Government's scheme. It is fair to say that this was not done for them. Nor was it the scheme they would have designed for themselves.

The intention behind the scheme is to make the building of apartments viable. For reasons related to the housing shortage and the need to take climate action, we need many more apartments to be built in Dublin, Cork and our other cities. Unfortunately, it is not viable to build apartments at present because of the cost involved. This subsidy is designed to make it viable to produce apartments that would otherwise not be built.

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