A Sinn Féin TD has called the Minister for Health "irresponsible" for his comments made earlier today regarding the opposition's supposed dependency on the housing crisis.
The comments from both Kathleen Funchion TD and Minister Donnelly were sparked from a finding this morning when Sinn Féin's Spokesperson for Housing, Local Government and Heritage Eoin O'Broin, brought to light from a question raised in the Dáil, that almost €1bn which was allocated to the housing sector went unspent.
While the sum of money went untouched between 2020 and 2022, Government has said that it was due to the multiple closures of the housing sector, inflation costs of materials and other impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Speaking from Kilkenny this afternoon on the issues raised by O'Broin, Fianna Fáil's Stephen Donnelly has said Sinn Féin are dependent on the housing crisis as a political party and that they have opposed almost all of the changes the Government put forward, even in the circumstances of Sinn Féin initially calling out for the need of said changes to ease the housing crisis.
Donnelly listed off multiple motions the coalition Government has brought to the Dáil and said such were denied by Sinn Féin. He then went on to say that Eoin O'Broin is taking a particular 'slant' from the information this morning rather than focusing on what the Government has spent and how many houses have been built.
Listen to what Minister Donnelly told Beat News about that Sinn Féin "slant" and their need of a housing crisis here:
"Irresponsible"
In a follow-up interview with Sinn Féin's Kathleen Funchion, it was highlighted just how long the Carlow-Kilkenny TD has been raising issues of homelessness in the Dáil.
Funchion backed her Dublin colleague while stating that the Minister had made "irresponsible" remarks while thousand of people are currently affected by the crisis.
As TD Funchion replied to Minister Donnelly's comments while speaking to Beat News, she said that homelessness was the issue of her very first speech in the Dáil and many years later that issue has only worsened:
