Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Anti-Austerity Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I would not have a problem with having a constitutional right to housing. Similar to what has already been touched on, does Ms Regan believe legislation would not be enough? The reason I raise the question is that Britain does not have a constitution but it has a right to housing. I think most European countries do not really have constitutions. Would Ms Regan advocate for legislation to be introduced straight away to assert those rights?

The reason I raise the issue is that I have a problem with the Constitution being continually invoked as the only way one has rights in this country, if Ms Regan knows what I mean. It is very hard to change the Constitution, for example, to repeal the eighth amendment and so on. Sometimes it is overly invoked, but I would not have a problem with the premise.

At the launch last week, it was mentioned that families were being forced to stay in emergency accommodation for nine to 18 months. From what Ms Regan found, are these lengths of stay becoming normalised? Ms Regan mentioned the impact on families, parents and children. What is the longest she has come across of a family being in emergency accommodation?

The other reason I raised a question about the Constitution is that children are meant to have rights under the Constitution. However, we all know it means nothing. It is ignored daily. Women are not meant to have to leave the home to get a job but, obviously, that has been ignored for a long time. This morning, Edmund Honohan mentioned the possibility of compulsory purchase orders on the basis of children's rights in the Constitution, that is, that homelessness is impacting on children and that one could use the law and the recent children's referendum. Does Ms Regan think that is a possible basis for keeping families in their homes, be they in private rental accommodation or in mortgage arrears?

At the launch last week, Paul Sweeney from TASC questioned whether we can finance a major housing programme to deal with all the major housing problems. He said the answer was an unequivocal "Yes". Would Ms Regan agree? Would she agree that the only way to provide fully for the right to housing is by ensuring the State, in particular, builds public housing, or "local authority housing" as my comrade over here on the right was arguing for this morning? I agree the term "social housing" is now becoming a term of stigma. In the past, local authorities built roughly one third of housing. When I was a child, that was the way it was.

I imagine Ms Regan is not only advocating legal changes but she is simply highlighting this point in particular. Fundamentally, the only way we can guarantee people's right to housing is if the State recognises that it should not be left to the private sector as a source of speculation. The State must intervene and build housing on a major scale.