Leo: ‘We’re not shifting blame to councils on housing’

TAOISEACH Leo Varadkar has backed a threat by his Housing Minister to strip local authorities of their powers to provide emergency accommodation, but he denied he was trying to shift the blame from his handling of the crisis.

On Thursday, Eoghan Murphy accused councils of failing in their duty to roll out emergency accommodation and threatened to transfer the responsibility to his department. Mr Varadkar yesterday supported that stance.

He told RTÉ Radio’s Morning Ireland: ‘I totally accept that this is not happening quick enough. That is why we want to put the pressure on local authorities to deliver faster the money that’s already pre-allocated in the budget for next year.’

Put to him that this was an effort to ‘spin’ away from his own responsibility, he replied: ‘No it’s not. Our responsibilities are clear. We’ve set out a very ambitious programme to build homes.’ In 2016, then housing minister, Tánaiste Simon Coveney pledged that no families would be using emergency accommodation by summer 2017. Some 10,000 people are now using such services.

Sinn Féin housing spokesman Eoin Ó Broin called on Mr Murphy to resign over his remarks and said his party would press ahead with a motion of no confidence in him.

‘For two years now... a whole chorus of housing policy experts, NGOs and homeless campaigners, have demanded very specific action [on the flow of families into homelessness and the speed of delivery of social housing] and the Minister has been refusing to do those.’ He also accused the Minister of trying to shift the blame from his handling of the crisis to the local authorities.

Meanwhile, new Central Bank figures have revealed that almost 250 homes were repossessed in the spring.