SDLP Foyle MLA Mark H Durkan has accused Sinn Féin of showing contempt for those impacted by the North’s housing crisis.
He was speaking after Sinn Féin MLAs failed to register a vote in the SDLP’s Opposition Day motion expressing a lack of confidence in the Executive to deliver on their Programme for Government housing targets.
Foyle MLA Mr Durkan said: “The SDLP Opposition brought forward this motion today after the Executive and Communities Minister recently cut their own modest housing targets in half, leaving little prospect that it will meet the Programme for Government pledge to build 5,850 homes by the end of the current mandate – a promise set just weeks ago. They are failing everyone who is living in limbo waiting for a home.
“The fact that not a single Sinn Féin MLA cast a vote on today’s motion is an insult to everyone stuck on social housing waiting lists, struggling with rising rents or trying to save for a deposit. Sinn Féin have shown utter contempt for the housing crisis and the Executive’s abject failure to respond.
“Addressing our failing wastewater infrastructure is also key to building new homes, yet the Sinn Féin Finance and Infrastructure Ministers have no plan to fix it.
“It is galling that on the same day Sinn Féin MLAs in the North ignored a critical housing debate, their colleagues in the South were bringing their own motion on housing and staging a rally outside Leinster House demanding emergency action on housing and homelessness.
“It is yet more evidence of Sinn Féin’s partitionist hypocrisy, campaigning loudly in the South, while doing nothing when they hold the power and the purse strings to help people here.”
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