Rabbitte attacks lack of action on housing

LABOUR leader Pat Rabbitte yesterday accused the Government of not taking housing needs seriously.

Speaking at the launch of the party’s local election manifesto in Dublin, Mr Rabbitte accused the Government of failing those who can’t afford a home and asked voters to give Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats the red card.

“The one thing that the Taoiseach is not serious about is housing.... If there’s one outrageous disgrace ...it is access to houses,” he said.

Focusing on the Government’s Social Partnership commitment to build 10,000 affordable houses, Mr Rabbitte said: “Not a brick has been put on brick and not one house has been delivered yet.”

When asked what he thought of Fianna Fáil’s local election pledge to solve the housing crisis and the Progressive Democrat’s promise to audit local authority spending, Mr Rabbitte replied: “Humbug to both of them. You would think that those parties had been kept out of Government for the last seven years.”

Labour, which currently has 147 city, town and county councillors, is running 304 candidates for local authority seats across the country in June, including 110 who are seeking election for the first time.

Those candidates include 62 women and nine people aged 26 or under, while one candidate, Seamus Rogers, is seeking to retain the seat that he has held in Donegal south-west since 1961.

Labour’s manifesto, entitled Doing a Better Job, also focuses on planning, health, transport, education, policing and a range of other local issues.

Prominence has also been given by the party to its plan to revamp local government.

But Mr Rabbitte’s central message was that a Government summed up by words such as Abbotstown, Punchestown, e-voting and the savage 16 social welfare cuts had let the Irish people down and had to go.

“For all these reasons I make no apology for encouraging people to protest against the Government.

“The message I am getting on the doorsteps, in shopping centres, outside churches, all around the country is that people want to see the beginning of the end of this dreadful Government,” he said.

Although he was critical of Sinn Féin, Mr Rabbitte called on voters to support other opposition parties once they had voted for Labour with their first preferences.