Housing Executive Is Abolished By DUP Minister

The Housing Executive in the North is to be abolished by the DUP Minister Nelson McCausland. The Executive which has existed for over years has 90,000 properties and employs more than 3,000 people. The SDLP's Foyle MLA, Mark H Durkan, criticised the minister for the way he made the announcement. "The demolition of the Housing Executive, which is the symbol of the one great progressive move in dealing with the north's pitiful legacy of political housing, is bad enough," he said. "To use welfare reform as the smokescreen for hacking away at this body was a sign of the minister's dual wedding to both a vicious Tory cuts agenda and a determination to re-politicising housing allocations. "But for the minister to announce it without the chance for MLAs to properly interrogate the decision is an act of rank cowardice.".