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

I am very happy to stand over our plan, its delivery and its record. That stands in sharp contrast to Sinn Féin's lack of a plan and its lack of alternatives in this space. It has never produced or costed a housing plan. Take the vacant property grant. The Deputy says he is not opposed to it, but he allocated no moneys to it whatsoever in the Sinn Féin alternative budget. To use an example of that, the figures are 7,362 applications to that scheme, 4,253 applications approved and up to €70,000 in grants. If you meet the homeowners who have been able to avail of that grant, you will see that it is making a real difference, and they cannot understand why the Deputy and his party would remove such a measure that works so well. In his response to me, therefore, he might explain to me what Sinn Féin's new vacant property grant looks like. All I can discern from it is that Sinn Féin would get the local authorities to buy the properties and it would sell them back into the market with some criteria and conditions attached à la the buy-and-renew scheme, not this scheme at all.

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