SINN FÉIN deputy leader Mary Lou McDonald has called for housing in Nama (National Asset Management Agency) to be used to provide accommodation for people living in council flats that are “damp and overrun with rats” and similar to conditions in “refugee camps”.

Ms McDonald referred to the RTÉ Prime Time programme that highlighted the state of local authority flats in Dublin and Limerick. She said “the conditions that many citizens are living in are not fit for human habitation. They live in flats that are damp and overrun with rats”. She said there were “children with asthma and other medical conditions living in circumstances which a senior microbiologist described as reminiscent of refugee camps”.

The Dublin Central TD said the programme showed “the kind of hardship experienced by many communities in Dublin and beyond who have been abandoned”. The Government “has tied us to an EU-IMF deal that explicitly envisages the sale of State assets to write down debt and that imposes vicious austerity on ordinary people”, including housing conditions faced by many in local authority flats, she said.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny said the Government “proposes to sort out the economic mess it has been left with by a government” which made an EU-IMF agreement that it denied was taking place.

Mr Kenny said “we will tell the people the truth”. Ms McDonald said it was “getting a little tedious in this House that when a straight question is put to the Taoiseach he runs for cover behind the record of his predecessors”.

The Taoiseach said “the Government will deal with the challenges of the economic legacy that it has inherited”. Minister of State for Housing Willie Penrose would report to the Dáil “in the not-too-distant future” on Nama’s housing stock and there would be a “social dividend”. Mr Kenny said they “cannot do it all over Ireland but we must start with some measure of facility provision for people who are disadvantaged”.