Kieran O'Donnell (Limerick City, Fine Gael)

I will go through a number of the points that were raised. I welcome the fact that Senator Joe O'Reilly made reference to auto-enrolment and the benefits relating to it and to his former colleague Heather Humphreys, who brought it forward. He mentioned that we are running a budget surplus and that everything done in the budget is to ensure that we can deal with the hard times internationally.

Senator McDowell is not here. I will leave responding to his points until the end in case he happens to come back.

I will deal with the help to buy scheme, which was raised by Senators Casey and Rabbitte. As the House is probably aware, people making use of the local authority affordable purchase scheme can claim help to buy support where they are availing of a discount of more than 20%. The Senators spoke about the help to buy scheme, which requires the loan to equal at least 70% of the home's value. Therefore, in reality, if the equity stake is above 22%, you will not qualify for the help to buy scheme. When I was a backbencher, I got the then Minister for Finance, Michael McGrath, to change the legislation to allow people who qualified for the local authority affordable purchase scheme, a scheme whereby the local authorities build houses, starter homes, for affordable purchase, and who were getting a discount of up to 40% to still qualify for a refund of 10% of the value under the help to buy scheme. There are particular areas within that. It is something we need to look at a bit more but the Senators' points are well made. I will bring the principle of the fresh start back to the Minister.