Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

With the greatest respect, I acknowledge that property values where Senator Conway-Walsh is living are not the same as those in the general local authority area I represented.

The help-to-buy scheme was very much a Fianna Fáil initiative in the confidence and supply agreement with the Government. All one needs to do is go on daft.ieand look at the price of any three-bedroom semi-detached house in Stillorgan, Dundrum, Kilmacud, Leopardstown or Clonskeagh. Just because one happens to live in Dublin and one ends up having an expensive house does not mean one is wealthy. It just means one has a higher mortgage and one spends a higher percentage of one's take-home income on housing. I made this point earlier at a meeting of the Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach where we were discussing the fact that teachers in south County Dublin are being paid the same as teachers in rural Mayo or Longford but they are paying €2,500 a month in rent whereas one might rent a house for €400 or €500, and certainly less than €1,000, in other parts of Ireland outside the main cities in smaller towns and villages.

This is not about making people wealthy. Senator Boyhan will be as familiar with the property market in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown as I am. I ask all Senators to consider the cost of a three-bedroom semi-detached house in south Dublin, particularly in the Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown area, and he or she will realise that this is not a scheme designed for the super rich. It is designed to give people who were from an area, who may have grown up in an area and who are working in that area, some small relief towards the purchase of an incredibly expensive property. That is all it is.