Cillian Woods

What it's bringing to the market is, yes, bringing units to the market.

It's going to bring 2,600 units and apartments to even Cork and Limerick, where there's not actual apartments been built for many, many years, to the market for people to actually buy.

So it's bringing units, but there's no necessary sign that this is a cost-effective way of delivering units.

Maybe you could argue as a sector, it gets the sector building again.

It keeps the sector going if it's going to go through a lull.

But there's no sense that the builders don't have enough work to get on with.

They don't necessarily need to be building apartments at the moment.

Yeah, so that's actually something that's come out in recent years, that you can bundle up a bunch of supports here together to get... Like help to buy.

get like helped by, which is what a lot of people avail of, but only goes up to 500 grand.

So if we're talking about an apartment for between 400 and 500 grand that would come through this scheme, you could get easily half of that paid for by the state in some form or another, whether that's helped by the first home scheme where the state would take up to 30% equity share in the house, which is one way viewed as a loan, but really it's a loan that you never need if you're never going to leave that house or leave that apartment.

You never need to repay that.

So it's kind of money in your back pocket until you're dead and then eventually someone has to come along and has to pay it in a few years.

So you can add Cricona together, which can be up to 120 grand.

You're looking at about 65 grand for a first home scheme on average at the moment would probably be higher for an apartment and help to buy as well.

So you're easily looking at half of the cost of an apartment, two bed apartment will be paid for by the state in the scheme and can be paid for in the scheme.

Yeah, the breakdown is mostly in Dublin, but what it has done is spread definitely a bunch of apartment developments to Cork, and it's aimed to also bring new builds to Limerick, to Galway, to Waterford.

Any of the cities are meant to be able to avail of this, but most of the apartments are coming to market through Creative Cunha in Dublin the first of this year, I think, later this year, and then Cork next year.

Right.

What's the opposition been saying about this?

It's a subsidy for developers, which is not necessarily completely the case in that it's the opposition have been saying that this is just money in the back pocket of developers.