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

The Government introduced the Land and Conveyancing Law Reform Act in 2013 which has led to a tenfold increase in the numbers of repossession cases lodged with the courts. The Government has failed to get the banks to meet their mortgage lending targets. It has failed to control the spiralling costs of rent because it will not introduce rent controls. It has failed to invest in appropriate emergency accommodation, especially for families. That is the Government's record. No amount of activity or propaganda from the Government's press office can change that.

The families waiting for emergency accommodation, those on the homeless lists and those not on the homeless list but who have to sleep in the box room of their mother’s house with their three kids - I am sure we all meet them at our constituency clinics - want to know when the Government will take a hold of these matters and fulfil its responsibilities. They want to know when the Government will produce the funding for social housing. The local authorities still have no word as to what their housing budgets will be and will not know until March or April, an outrageous situation. What is the Government going to do in the here and now? I am not talking about press releases or propaganda but action.

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