Brendan Griffin (Kerry, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It is clearly is personal when so many members of the Opposition say it is not. We all know it is personally directed at the Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy.

I concur with my colleagues on these benches about the efforts being made to resolve this huge crisis. At least we are rising to address this challenge unlike the people over there. Sometimes I wonder whether it is this Parliament or that in Westminster from which it abstains because its contribution to both is equally useless. In this State's history, it has never built a home, it has only pulled them apart. That is all it has ever done on homes in this State.

I welcome that Sinn Féin is taking the parliamentary avenue in trying to take out an opponent but this is a political stunt. It will do nothing to help the people who we are supposed to be helping, those who are seeking homes and those who are in emergency accommodation. They are doing nothing as an Opposition to help. They are being purely political. If they cared about the people they are supposed to care for, they would not turn on Deputy Eoghan Murphy now. They turned away from Government in 2016 because obviously the housing crisis was not as important as its own political interests at that time. It is the same in Northern Ireland. The figures there are shocking. They have shamelessly turned their backs on those people too.

Sinn Féin wants us to believe that it can take 10,000 out of homelessness, yet it could not even manage to get 10,000 signatures out of Antrim. That is what we are dealing with. Now they are after a head. It is in their nature to go after a head. They have gone after the head of the Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, the hardest working politician I have come across since I entered the gates of this House almost eight years ago. It is completely political and it is shameless. We have heard many statistics tonight. There is one stands out most - Sinn Féin's 14% rating with RedC. It is the one statistic that Deputy Mary Lou McDonald obsesses about. After only a few short months, she is a huge disappointment. Panic is starting to set in and the response to that panic is this shameless motion.

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