Martin Mansergh (Fianna Fail)

I would be the last person to deny the underlying problems which Senator Higgins mentions. Getting young people into the housing market is a real problem. I hope one of the achievements of the Government over the next three or four years is the improvement of the affordability of houses. There is a sense of injustice in that it seems much more difficult for young people at roughly the same stage of life and in roughly the same occupation to get into the housing market than it was for people of my generation 20 to 30 years ago. In addition, young people see professional people with more money than they know what to do with investing in property and driving up house prices.

My problem with this recommendation is that it would not be an efficient way of achieving what is desired any more than the first-time buyer's grant was. That had long since been absorbed into house prices, though it may have provided some psychological comfort. The house price is, unfortunately, related to what people can afford to pay. The doubling of mortgage relief would not necessarily increase the capacity of a first-time buyer to pay because the price and the loan would be lifted by a corresponding amount.