Sir, – Stephen Collins would be well served to pay attention to the reasons why the Labour Party tabled a no confidence motion in the Government (“Labour needs to stop aping Sinn Féin”, Opinion & Analysis, March 31st).
As I said in the Dáil on Wednesday, we will not be patronised by Fine Gael, and their arrogance and disrespect for the constitutional right of an Opposition party to hold the Government to account. We gave them every opportunity to change their disastrous decision to lift the eviction ban with a Dáil motion in February that contained a range of constructive solutions, and draft legislation this month.
For the last seven years, it is ideology, not the successful economy we helped build from the ruins of three Fianna Fáil-led administrations that have held back the implementation of sustainable solutions to the housing crisis.
I am proud to have served in government, and Labour will campaign in the next election to do so again.
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As our finance spokesperson, in advance of every budget I publish comprehensive and costed social democratic proposals that would transform Ireland.
To borrow a phrase from my modern-day political hero John Hume, you cannot eat good GDP figures. It’s what we do with our hard-won wealth and prosperity that matters and on every housing metric this government is failing. Record-breaking rents. Record house prices. Record levels of homelessness.
We don’t need lectures from those semi-detached from the housing disaster a generation of young people is experiencing. What we need is the Government to recognise that its housing plan is not working, and is simply not ambitious enough to address the social and economic crisis their policies have caused. The grubby little side-deals with so-called Independents that gave the Government their majority will live in infamy. – Yours, etc,
GED NASH TD,
Drogheda,
Co Louth.