Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity)
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65. To ask the Minister for Finance if his Department has carried out a study regarding the effectiveness of the help to buy scheme. [45239/19]

Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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In 2017 I commissioned and published an independent review of the Help to Buy (HTB) incentive and last year, I commissioned an independent Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA) of HTB. Both reports are available on my Department’s website.

In brief, the CBA, confirmed the findings of the independent review as follows:

- Prices: While there may have been a very small increase in prices attributable to the introduction of the incentive, the primary driver of house prices remained the continued misalignment between demand and supply.

- Supply: The evidence suggested that following the introduction of the incentive there was a marked increase in supply which can be attributed in part to HTB.

- Affordability: The analysis also found that availability of HTB had reduced the time to save for all claimants and improved the overall affordability of housing for these individuals.

- Benefit/Cost Ratio:The analysis found a benefit-cost ratio of 1.28 indicating a moderate positive effect for the incentive.