SINN Féin TD Pádraig Mac Lochlainn has been criticized for claiming that the government was unwilling to spend money on its own people, but “bragged” about helping refugees.
Mary Lou McDonald was forced to defend her party whip after the comments on Highland Radio on Thursday morning were sharply criticized by Social Democrats TD Gary Gannon, who said they were proof that refugees from Ukraine were being used as “scapegoats”.
Speaking about the Mica recovery plan on his local radio station, Mr MacLochlainn said the government was unwilling to spend money “on its own people” but “bragged” about what it was spending on refugees.
“The government complained that they had to spend billions to help their own people in dire need whose lives have collapsed, buildings around them in Donegal and the west are collapsing and the same government boasted to the world almost billions of dollars in spending and rightly so.” , he said. told The nine to noon performing with Greg Hughes.
“That is our place in the world, we help refugees, every country in the world does that. But they complained that they were doing the same for their own people and I think that has stuck in a lot of heads and hearts and it gets to the heart of what is wrong with this government’s approach.
“That their own people are in need and that they don’t have the same urgency and passion for them.”
Mr Gannon said that “divining up the government’s failure is both spectacularly useless and completely unacceptable” and called on Mr Mac Lochlainn to clarify or withdraw his comments.
“The scapegoat and other people who take refuge here do not reflect that call. We’ve seen that before and we know all too well how it ends,” said the Social Democrats TD.
Speaking at Ringsend on Thursday morning, McDonald said the last thing Mr MacLochlainn or… Ourselves would do is “divide people who seek international protection and refuge here”.
“We are very clear, the whole of society is very clear that we must care for and support all those who are fleeing a terrible criminal bombing by Putin and let me also say that the government must respond in a way to everyone’s needs that is seen as fair, and even handed over,” she said.
“And let’s capture for a moment the lack of urgency, the obvious lack of urgency on the part of this government to address the housing and shelter needs of people here for a very, very long time and in no way are we choosing to to pay attention to one or the other of those realities, you pay attention to both.”
She said this was “certainly” the position of Mr Mac Lochlainn, adding: “Pádraig has a very strong reputation and position on social inclusion and he knows more than any of us would allow the failures of government and housing policy is the fault of someone other than the government itself. That is where the blame and responsibility lie.”
Mr MacLochlainn did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Mr Gannon’s call to clarify or withdraw his comments.