Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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Question 414: To ask the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government if he will review the system of loans available through the local authorities for first time home buyers with a view to ensuring that such applicants' loan requirements are adequately met with particular reference to the needs of individuals or couples forced to live in private rented accommodation, costing more than monthly mortgage repayments; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [14699/08]

Batt O'Keeffe (Cork North West, Fianna Fail)
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The Government's long-established policy on housing is to enable every household to have available an affordable dwelling of good quality, suited to its needs, in a good environment and, as far as possible, at the tenure of its choice. Our approach to achieving this policy objective is that those who can afford to do so should provide for their own housing, with the aid of certain fiscal incentives or subsidies and that those unable to access housing in this way should have access to social housing or income support to rent private housing.

The housing policy statement Delivering Homes, Sustaining Communities, the National Development Plan (NDP) 2007-2013 and Towards 2016 support this strategy and have been effective in delivering increased outputs. The NDP provides the resources — some €18 billion in total — which will support increased social and affordable housing output including the provision of 60,000 new social homes and 40,000 affordable units. While many of the 40,000 households benefiting from affordable measures may avail of mortgages from private financial institutions, substantial resources are being made available through the Housing Finance Agency to fund local authority loan finance for low income households to ensure that access to finance is not an obstacle to home ownership for this group. Income limits apply to these loans to ensure effective targeting of resources and the maximum loan available is €185,000. These income and loan limits are currently under review.