The budget is better and fairer than any of the five budgets introduced by the previous Fine Gael and Labour Party Government owing to the influence of Fianna Fáil. The confidence and supply agreement we entered into with Fine Gael required us to facilitate budgets and ensure they agreed with the priorities outlined in the framework document. That agreement gave priority to investment in public services over tax cuts and required a 2:1 split in budgets to recognise the new priorities and enable us to start investing in the people again. This has been more than achieved in the budget. We have seen a 3:1 split in public services over tax cuts, which is welcome.

Fianna Fáil has achieved on many issues and the first was capital acquisitions tax. In recent weeks we read that the Government would increase the threshold for group A relatives where a parent wanted to give a gift to his or her child. The threshold has been increased for groups B and C owing to contributions made by Fianna Fáil.

The second element I am happy Fianna Fáil managed to improve is a reduction in deposit interest retention tax, DIRT. Many people, including the elderly, have a lot of money deposited in banks and applying DIRT would be unfair. I am glad that the Government has taken a step in the right direction.

I am unhappy with the first-time buyer's grant. A lot of first-time buyers will have watched the Minister for Finance deliver the Budget Statement today, but I knew exactly what would happen to the grant. Last week I mentioned in this House that we had heard whispers about a first-time buyer's grant worth €10,000. Today we have heard that there will be a first-time buyer's grant of €20,000. That will put an extra €20,000 into the hands of auctioneers and developers.

Exactly.

The grant will do nothing for people who live in Dublin, specifically in my constituency where there are no homes being built. I do not know where homes worth €400,000 are being built, but they are not being built in Dublin. The new initiative directly discriminates against first-time buyers in Dublin. The grant should have been applied to second-hand homes. The grant will not increase the supply of new homes. Instead, the Government needs to reduce development levies, introduce a site tax, analyse the costs associated with building houses such as the certification process, or reduce the number of building regulations. It needs to come up with a pragmatic way to increase supply. The grant goes nowhere near that and is disappointing. I cannot believe it has been increased to €20,000 when the sum originally mooted was €10,000.