Housing Minister Eoghan Murphy has accused broadcaster Séan O’Rourke of making a political point about posters in the vicinity of the area where a homeless man suffered life-changing injuries earlier this week when his tent was lifted by a mechanical digger.

In a lively interview on RTÉ radio’s Today with Séan O’Rourke involving the Minister along with Fianna Fáil’s Darragh O’Brien, Sinn Féin’s Eoin O Broin and Richard Boyd Barrett of of People Before Profit, the broadcaster said: “This is not to make a political point, would you accept that one of the defining images of this election campaign will be the pictures on the front of The Examiner and other papers of that particular scene and the garda coming along to do the investigation with your picture on a pole overlooking the whole thing looking for votes, you as Housing Minister."

The Minister replied: “I think that is a political point.

“I have volunteers who put up my posters, they were postering late at night, the person who was doing it didn't notice what was happening because they were just focussed on doing one thing and the second we saw that it was there I had someone take it down, the person who put it up feels very bad about that.

“This isn't about Eoghan Murphy and posters in the campaign, this is about a problem we have in this country of people sleeping rough.”