McCreevy has insulted first-time buyers, says TD

REACTION: First-time house buyers would not even be able to buy the "doorbell to their homes" from the tax relief given to them in the Budget, according to the Socialist Party TD, Mr Joe Higgins.

The Dublin West deputy said the increase in VAT would add some €2,000 to the price of the average home. He said the abolition of the first-time buyers' grant was a "cruel blow" and had "injured" the first-time buyer, but "today the Minister insulted them".

The effect of the "so-called relief being given back to the first-time buyer amounts to €10 or €12 a month", he said. "They couldn't buy the doorbell with it." He said that decoding the relief, it was "in fact a further take from the young people attempting to purchase their home." He referred to the "scandal" of the stud farm industry which "has escaped scot-free as far as substantial taxation is concerned". He was going to suggest that the stallions in Kildare would sleep easily in their stalls tonight.

"But they probably won't sleep because they will be disturbed by their millionaire owners celebrating another Budget which hasn't laid a finger on them and no doubt the champagne will flow late into the night." There was the "spectacle of a single horse in a stud farm earning perhaps €250,000, every time it covers a mare", he said.

Mr Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (SF, Cavan-Monaghan) said the Budget was "one of the greatest frauds and swindles ever perpetrated against an Irish electorate". He said that Mr McCreevy "looked after the wealthy in all his Budgets".