Labour's plan aims to help first-time buyers

Labour Party proposals to help young people get on the property ladder will cost the State about €100 million a year in interest payments for every 10,000 people who buy a home.

The party's environment and local government spokesman Eamonn Gilmore said, however, that "as the scheme gets under way there would be reduced demand on other supports for housing such as rental allowance and subsistence and on social housing". He was speaking at the launch of the first of the party's "action plans" for better local communities.

It includes a radical reform of local government within the lifetime of the next administration, the removal of "excessive powers" from county managers, direct mayoral elections for cities by 2009, new town councils for suburban housing developments, better building control regulations and the introduction of 500 buses in the Greater Dublin area.

Mr Gilmore said the "Begin to Buy" scheme would allow a person in full-time employment buy a minimum 25 per cent cent stake in a home with the State financing and retaining ownership of the remaining share.

"If the take-up is 10,000 to 12,000 the cost would be €100 million because the cost to the State is the interest on the balance of the mortgage," Mr Gilmore said.

The capital funding would be provided through a €2.5 billion National Treasury Management Agency Fund. The scheme "will enable people to purchase a home where they have grown up or where they're working", Mr Gilmore said.

"We've built a lot of houses but we've built very few communities." The "irony is that some of the traditional village infrastructures are collapsing. Pubs are going, the post office is being closed down, the Garda station is being closed and the bank is moving elsewhere. Around the perimeters of the village, huge - effectively new - suburbs are being built without infrastructure."

Party leader Pat Rabbitte said transport was also a major priority with the promise of 500 new buses. "We have quality bus corridors without any buses", and "no matter what changes we make in public transport, the majority of passengers are still going to be moved by buses".

Senator Joanna Tuffy, the party's Dublin midwest candidate, said that promises made seven years ago to provide buses in the Lucan area as a "short-term" measure pending rail and the Luas development were never honoured. The party also calls for a flat €1 fare for adults and 50c for children on buses, but did not have a costing for this.

Mr Rabbitte said, however: "It would be one of the best uses of subsidy if we could take cars off the road.

There has been stasis for three-and-a-half years between the Government parties because the PDs wanted to privatise routes and Fianna Fáil did not." He denied there would be the same difficulty if Fine Gael and Labour were in power.

They would sit down with the Dublin Bus unions whom he believed would be willing to put some of the new routes in new areas out to tender.

New Building Control legislation would be put in place, where people were in homes where they can hear "every breath and sound on the other side of the wall".

Mr Gilmore said they were going to " to trim down the excessive powers of county managers in the past number of years and restore them to local representatives, so there isn't diktat by county manager".

A Dublin mayor would pull together the four local authorities, he added.