Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The crisis in housing, like the crisis in homelessness, is not new. Local communities have often had to cobble together responses to these crises. The members of a voluntary group that has come together in my constituency - Inner City Helping Homeless - speak to, care for and feed rough sleepers in the north inner city every night. That is an example of the non-statutory response that is being led by people who have a real sense of the scale of the crisis and an urgent wish and desire to address it. I suggest that the Government might take a leaf out of its book.

I will conclude by speaking about the local property tax issue that was raised by Labour Party Deputies, in particular. They mentioned that Dublin City Council has agreed to implement a 15% reduction in the tax on the family home. I remind them that Sinn Féin's manifesto in the recent local elections included a commitment to achieve the maximum possible reduction in this unfair tax in order to give some breathing room to struggling families and households. We kept our word. It might come as a shock to Labour Party Deputies that we set a premium on keeping our word. It might be worth remembering that the Labour Party made a similar commitment in its manifesto last May. It committed to "work with our local communities to implement the maximum possible reduction" in the unfair tax on the family home. True to form, the Labour Party then walked away from its commitments. We should not pretend for a moment that the housing and homelessness crises were created by councillors - democratically elected representatives - taking a democratic decision to ease the burden on struggling families. This crisis has been with us throughout the duration of this Government's term in office, but it has singularly failed to address it.

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