Donegal TD says it is ‘f*****g disgrace’ people earning €28k cannot get on housing list

Independent TD Thomas Pringle also described the Government’s position that an initiative to bring 78 vacant houses in Donegal back into use would have a positive impact in the county, as ‘b******t’.

In a colourful contribution to a debate on an emergency housing measures motion in the Dáil, Deputy Pringle said: “There are people earning €28,000 a year and they cannot get on the housing list.

"The Government should be ashamed of itself. Those people are being left behind and I have to sit there in the office and say to them that there is nothing I can do. There is nothing I can tell them. Go away. That is a f*****g disgrace but that is the reality of the situation.

“There is no doubt that Housing for All has failed, and very badly failed. The announcement by the Minister, Deputy Darragh O’Brien, that the return of these 78 vacant homes in Donegal has a positive impact on communities is completely misleading, as written here, but really I think it is b******t.

"These vacant homes did not go anywhere, they were still owned by the council, they were just left inactive which never should have been the case in the first place. In reality, 78 houses will make no difference when there are 2,600 people on the housing waiting list.”

The Donegal deputy claimed that if ‘people who could not afford houses and could not afford to provide themselves with housing were actually included in the list there could easily be 10,000 on the housing list in Donegal’.

He told TDs that property prices ‘rocketed’ more than 16 per cent in the year to October, across the west of Ireland.

Minister of State at the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Kieran O'Donnell, replying on behalf of the Government, stated: “I do not accept that we lack empathy, to which Deputy Pringle made reference. We recognise the problem. That is why we have a Housing for All plan and are bringing in various measures. The record needs to be put straight. We are bringing in a range of proposals.”

7,700 vacant properties while 2,646 families await homes, ‘no reason’ homeless, mica-afflicted and refugees can’t be housed