HOUSING MINISTER DARRAGH O’Brien has said he wants to see the government’s First Home Scheme extended to secondhand homes as politicians push campaign promises heading into the general election.

Cabinet ministers are convening this morning for what is likely their last meeting before the Dáil is dissolved and an election is held in the coming weeks.

Items on the agenda include proposals to appoint a full Ambassador of Palestine to Ireland, reduce school transport scheme fees, and legislate for new powers to search foreign aircraft stopped in Ireland for the presence of any unauthorised weapons of war.

The government is entering a final push of trying to approve decisions that may secure it votes, while opposition members set out their stalls to try to sway voters to their side instead.

Arriving at Government Buildings for the Cabinet meeting this morning, Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien of Fianna Fáil said the party will be putting forward “new measures on housing” during the election campaign that would “differentiate” the party from its coalition partners Fine Gael and the Green Party.

He said, for example, that he would like to see the First Home Scheme extended to include secondhand homes.

The First Home Scheme is a shared equity scheme for first-time buyers that involves the government and participating banks paying up to 30% of the cost of the home in exchange for a stake in it, which can later be bought back by the home buyer.

Currently, the scheme is only available to first-time buyers who are purchasing a newly built property or building their own.

“I think the First Home Scheme has been a really important measure, particularly for people who have finance, have a mortgage, have a deposit, but are short,” O’Brien said.

“We would like to see an expansion of that for first-time buyers to secondhand homes and that will be one of our proposals,” he said.

“There are areas of the country where there’s not as many new builds as we would like and we’re going to expand that further but there are people as well looking at options to buy secondhand homes and we’d like to support first-time buyers in doing that.” 

Tánaiste Micheál Martin, the leader of Fianna Fáil, also said this weekend that the party wants to expand the First Home Scheme to secondhand homes, saying that there needs to be a “permanent acceleration of homebuilding”.

Several opposition parties have been critical of the First Home Scheme, arguing that the shared equity approach causes housing price inflation.

Sinn Féin has indicated it would end the First Home Scheme, as well as phasing out the government’s other flagship housing programme Help to Buy - another scheme for first-time buyers purchasing a new house or apartment or self-building.