The UK government won considerable kudos from younger voters this week when it unveiled plans to help first-timers get on the housing ladder.

The project that generated the excitement - the Shared Ownership Scheme - was a novel incarnation of an old concept.

In essence, it will see the UK government providing public money for first-timers who can not afford to buy a home on their own. Under the scheme, buyers who qualify will only need to be able to raise between 50 and 75 per cent of the purchase price for the property they want to buy.

The remainder will be acquired by the government and a mortgage lender, with both becoming investors in the property. As time goes on and the homeowner comes into more money, they can raise their stake.

From a UK first-timer's perspective it sounds fantastic - finally they have a chance of property ownership. But their peers abroad will look on longingly, wondering why their government can't do something similar.

The good news is that a comparable scheme already exists in the Republic, where the plight of low income families who can't afford to buy a home is well-known.

The Irish version of the shared ownership scheme - where buyers fund at least 40 per cent of the purchase price - is more limited than the UK alternative.

For one thing, the UK scheme will be open to a wider group of people because it will not apply a means test to applicants. Instead, it's up to UK lenders to establish which applicants deserve to participate and weed out all the rest.

In the Republic, things are considerably more regulated, with local authorities administering the scheme according to strict income parameters.

The UK scheme is also expected to be applied much more widely than the Irish equivalent, with UK chancellor, Gordon Brown, stating that it will be used to buy houses on the open market. While there is nothing to preclude the Irish scheme being used in the same way, it has tended to be associated with buying local authority housing.

Gordon Brown is hoping that his new scheme will help 100,000 families to buy homes over the course of the current parliament.

The latest figures for the Republic, as the difference in population might suggest, are markedly smaller. Statistics from the Department of the Environment show that in the period between January and September last year, 665 shared-ownership transactions were completed in the State, with more than half of these coming in Dublin. Over the same period, local authorities received 2,390 applications under the scheme (918 of these being processed at the end of the year).

Details of how the Irish scheme works can be obtained from local authorities but the main thing to remember is that it can only be accessed by people who are in need of housing and satisfy an income test or by those on a local authority housing waiting list. Existing local authority tenants or tenant purchasers also qualify, as do those who have participated in the Capital Loan Scheme for over a year.

As far as the income test goes, gross income must not exceed €36,800 for single people. For couples, the income of the highest earner must be multiplied by 2.5 before being added to the other income. If the answer is lower than €92,000, then the couple will qualify.

For more information, see www.oasis.gov.ie.