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

Stop for a second; just relax. It will disappoint Deputy Doherty that we will exceed our target substantially this year, as we have done in every year of Housing for All. We have delivered 125,000 new homes. More than 500 first-time buyers a week are drawing down their mortgages using the supports this Government brought in, such as the help-to-buy grant. For people watching in, the help-to-buy grant is €30,000 of the tax they paid back in their pockets to help with their deposit. More than 50,000 households have claimed it. Sinn Féin and its housing spokesperson would abolish that even though many of his colleagues still submit parliamentary questions to me and my colleagues asking us to extend it. There is the first home scheme, the bridge the gap scheme, which has had more than 11,000 registrations and offers about €70,000 of supports. That is €100,000 combined for first-time buyers and the Deputy is against it. To get back to it, it is a fact that the Deputy's party members in Dublin city and county alone have objected to more than 6,000 homes in the past two years. For anyone, particularly a member of his party and Deputy Doherty as deputy leader, to accuse anyone else in this House of lying after his performance in the past two weeks is galling.

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