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

The Minister's rhetoric and his bluff on the issue of housing convinces precisely nobody. The idea that he would rate the Government's performance on housing as a reflection of housing being its number one priority is truly terrifying if that is the Minister's idea of the Government's best shot at sorting out a crisis that has now been with us for many years. The targets are wrong to begin with. They are insufficient and are not being met. The Government has no sense or capacity to grasp the scale of this crisis and the pace at which we need a response. That is the truth. This crisis has now touched every corner, every aspect, every class and every part of Irish society. People are suffering now. The glib answer that the Government is doing enough and it was better than last year or the year before or the year before that when the lot of you were still making a hames of it then convinces absolutely nobody.

On the issue of mortgage interest relief, of course it has to be targeted. The scheme has to be time bound. There have been ten individual hikes in ECB interest rates. The Minister needs to tell people now that the Government will intervene. If the Government finds Sinn Féin's scheme is not to its liking, then set out what its scheme will look like, to give mortgage holders a break.

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