SDLP continue to oppose bedroom tax

Councillor Tierney said: “In the last couple of weeks, as letters about the bedroom tax have been going through doors in Derry, there have been plenty of claims and accusations. Many of those claims have been wrong and many of them have been used deliberately as a distraction to cover from damaging political decisions taken by the Executive.”

He refused to get involved in what he described as a ‘tit for tat’ battle with Sinn Féin.

“I think it would be far more helpful if the facts of the bedroom tax were explained.

“The bedroom tax is a Tory policy being implemented at Westminster.It would force people to move house or to pay an extra bill and both the DUP and Sinn Fein voted to bring it here, the SDLP opposed this both in the Assembly and in Westminster,” he claimed.

“Mitigations have been put in place for three years in the North but there is no guarantee that this protections will remain beyond 2020.

“A vote for the SDLP in the forthcoming election will be a vote to stop the bedroom tax ever being implemented in the North. We opposed it when it was first mooted and we will continue to oppose it,” added Colr. Tierney.

He continued: “The answer to the current housing crisis here is not the bedroom tax. The answer is to build more social and affordable housing so that people can have the security and dignity of a home.

“The fact is that we haven’t been building enough houses for quite long time,” he noted.