Michael McCarthy (Labour)

I beg your pardon – the Minister, Deputy Martin. I thought he was just the bright eyed boy. He is a Minister and also the bright eyed boy.

A part of the Fianna Fáil election manifesto of 1997 stated explicitly that "we will improve the first-time home buyer grant to £5,000 where the house is being bought in the joint names of a couple". The rhetoric and hypocrisy that successive Ministers have been piking out of the stables of Government over the past week lead me to believe that they had no meas for this grant. This begs the question why it was included in their election manifesto of 1997. Votes were won and the Cabinet table was filled by the star performers who had ensured in one fell swoop that the first-time buyer's grant would be eradicated almost as mysteriously as the Marie Celeste. They have done it with a speed that would do justice to an Olympic sprinter.

I do not know which annoys me most about the abolition of this scheme – the willy-nilly fashion of its abolition or that the Government has spent the last week trying to defend it. That insults the intelligence of the people, especially young people. Those young people have made provision for that grant. They are pushed into banks to try to come to some sort of agreement whereby they can own their homes. That is their right. Ireland has the highest concentration of home ownership in the European Union. That is a very healthy thing about this economy and our young people. However, the Government has slashed the grant that pushed people from local authority waiting lists into a position where they are sufficiently equipped to buy their own homes.