Tánaiste Leo Varadkar has stated that “housing is an emergency” but argued that calling it such is not going to “build any houses”.
His comments come ahead of a vote calling for the Government to declare a housing emergency.
There were fractious scenes in the Dáil on Tuesday evening as Housing Minister Darragh O’Brien branded the Sinn Féin motion as “semantics”.
Speaking in Dun Laoghaire on Wednesday morning, the Tánaiste said that housing is a “social crisis” but argued that labels are not going to make a difference to the Government’s housing plan.
“I have absolutely no doubt that the Minister for Housing and the Department of Housing are seized upon every day by the need to take action in relation to housing, to pull out all the stops in relation to housing,” he said.
“But other Government departments need to do their bit too and that's I think the role of the Department of Taoiseach to drive that forward.
“Housing is an emergency. It is a crisis. It is a social disaster.
“But just calling it those things doesn't build any houses.
“The role of us in Government is to make sure that the plans that we have are implemented and accelerated.”
Mr Varadkar acknowledged that while the Government is “making progress in housing”, homelessness numbers will likely rise when the October report is published at the end of this week.
He noted that the impact of the Government’s ban on evictions will not be seen for another month.
Sinn Féin’s housing spokesperson Eoin Ó Broin told the Irish Mirror that the Tánaiste’s comments saying that “housing is an emergency” do not go far enough.
“The central problem is the Government’s plan is not working,” he said.
“It is making the crisis worse. The whole purpose of declaring an emergency is to then take emergency action.
“I have heard nothing from Government that suggests that they are going to do anything other than what they were going to do anyway.”
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