By Gráinne Ní Aodha, PA
Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien is expected to survive a motion of no confidence tabled against him by the opposition.
The Solidarity-People Before Profit motion has been countered by a Government motion of confidence in the minister, giving the Government more speaking time during the parliamentary debate.
The PBP motion was to state that the Dáil “has no confidence in the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, that his housing policies are creating a catastrophic failure that is tearing apart the social fabric of Irish society, and calls for the minister to be removed from office”.
Speaking to the PA news agency, People Before Profit-Solidarity TD Paul Murphy said the motion against Mr O’Brien was a vote against the Government’s current housing policy.
He said: “This is about no confidence in the Minister for Housing, but also no confidence in the entire thrust of their housing policy and the need for that to change.”
Speaking outside Leinster House ahead of the motion, TD Richard Boyd Barrett said that the group has proposed an alternative to the Government’s Housing for All plan.
“So what we want are measures to end the speculation, to use vacant and zoned sites to develop them for public housing, and take them away from people who are just profiteering and exploiting the housing misery that huge numbers of people in this country are facing,” he said.
He said that PBP-Solidarity would build 20,000 public and affordable houses a year, and claimed that the Government has been building “approximately 2,000 public housing” annually for the last five years.
“I hope that it will highlight the need for this Government to abandon failed policies,” he said when it was put to him that the minister was likely to survive the motion.
“Now, of course, it’s ironic that the Government criticised the opposition, falsely, for not putting forward positive proposals when we have consistently done so, and they ignored them.
“But actually, by manipulating the Dáil schedule this week, and replacing our no confidence motion with a confidence motion, he has drastically reduced the time we have to put forward positive proposals, and to highlight the things that we think need to be done in order to address the housing crisis.”
On Monday, Mr O’Brien called the motion “a bit of a stunt” and “a bit of an attention-seeking exercise”, and said he was looking forward to the debate in the Dáil chamber on Tuesday afternoon.
