Opposition parties have roundly criticised the Government for failing to do enough to improve housing and health in Ireland in the budget.

Ireland’s finance minister Paschal Donohoe delivered the country’s annual budget day speech on Tuesday afternoon.

While welcoming certain housing measures, such as the allocation of additional funding to homelessness and more funding for the construction of social housing, Fianna Fail’s Michael McGrath told the parliament the Government had failed to get to grips with the housing crisis.

“It is the Government that is responsible for addressing the housing crisis and it is the Government that must accept its performance on housing has not been good enough,” Mr McGrath said.

He added that the Government should cut out its obsession with spin and focus on delivering homes instead.

“The number of people sleeping in emergency accommodation is a national scandal and a scar on our nation at present,” he said.

Almost 10,000 people are homeless in Ireland, including more than 3,800 children, the latest official figures show.

The finance spokesman described the affordable housing measures announced on Tuesday as a “breakthrough” and that the Government now needed to ensure that it was put into effect.

The party entered into a confidence and supply arrangement with the Government two years ago.

It used its influence to secure a 300 million euro affordable housing package in this year’s budget.

Mr McGrath said Fianna Fail made “no apologies” for insisting on a major focus on affordable housing because under the Fine Gael government’s watch home ownership had become a “distant dream” for more and more Irish people.

But the Irish Labour party’s housing spokeswoman Jan O’Sullivan described the affordable housing scheme as a “direct subsidy” to developers.

“Despite insistences from Fianna Fail that this would be a ‘housing budget’, it is anything but,” she said.

“Three hundred million euro for a so-called affordable housing scheme is absolutely miserable in the context of what is actually needed.”

Ms O’Sullivan said the housing proposals showed no imagination and would do nothing to ease the housing crisis when it comes to rent.

She added that the tax cuts announced for landlords would not deliver any extra rental properties but instead would line the pockets of those who’ve been benefiting from record increases in rent.

Green party leader Eamon Ryan said the Government’s pre-election budget had ignored climate change and demonstrated it had no long-term vision for Ireland’s future.

Mr Ryan said the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had sounded the alarm for world governments who were still asleep to this crisis but the finance minister had hit the snooze button.

“The budget was a chance to set us on the right course but the Taoiseach [Leo Varadkar] and Minister Donohoe have given up on that opportunity,” Mr Ryan said.

“We have a Government which has no vision for the long term future of this country. The budget reflects that sad reality.”