Micheál Martin (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will contrast that with Sinn Féin's position. I acknowledge all the challenges and the pricing and so on, but the bottom line is that our schemes have helped an enormous number of first-time buyers. The help-to-buy scheme has seen about 51,000 approvals. Sinn Féin opposed it and proposed to abolish it. As regards the first home scheme, likewise, over 3,000 homes have been bought by young couples or young individuals using that scheme. Sinn Féin proposed to abolish that. That is, I believe, why the people were not persuaded by its housing policy platform. Then it had a convoluted idea under affordable housing that people could buy the house but could not buy the land on which the house was built, and a Sinn Féin government would dictate how they would sell the house subsequently, which appealed to nobody out there in respect of young people looking to buy a house for the future.

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