A housing expert has warned that Government plans to help to first-time buyers could make housing more expensive for everyone.

The government is planning a help-to-buy scheme which could see cash top-ups worth thousands of euro to help savers gather a deposit.

However, Dr Lorcan Sirr, a housing lecturer at DIT, said it would breach the previous policy of giving equal help to buyers and renters.

He also said that giving cash to buyers will only push up prices, and make housing more expensive for everyone.

“We’ve been trying to get as much evidence as possible from other countries where they tried to do this which has shown that it has done little but create house price inflation,” he said.

“I would listen to the Department of Finance, I would exercise caution over that.

“And I would also be wary about breaching our own Government’s policy – it wouldn’t be good to have one Government department breach its own policy in such a blatant and flagrant way.”