Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

The Taoiseach said his party is not a nasty party. His party has chosen, with Fianna Fáil and the Green Party, shamefully, to give €100,000 to private companies to clear tents, which arrive back the next day, put up fences to block access to our city and to leave people sleeping in tents on our streets. Nobody should be sleeping in a tent on our streets. It is a cynical policy choice to do so. I make the point again; there are empty beds in the State accommodation system that the Government is choosing not to use, and why? In my opinion, it is extremely cynical politics. The Taoiseach knows that if a central issue in the next general election is housing, the cost of living or the healthcare crisis, they are not winning grounds for Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. They want to centre the issue of migration and to present themselves as being hard even though it will not make a single difference. All this cruelty the Government is doing does not make ordinary people's lives any better whatsoever. The job on our side of the House is to say that very clearly. Migrants are not responsible at all for the housing crisis the Government has caused.

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