Mr. Edmund Honohan:

It is a question of whether the common good requires the ownership of property to belong to the Irish citizens or if it is a negative, simply a limitation on the property rights of individuals.

Basically, Senator Norris is saying that if one goes back to the old 1919 declarations, that wording has been lost. If one looks at Gerry Hogan's book on the drafting of the 1937 Constitution one will find de Valera and other correspondents, including clerics, trying to work out precisely how the property rights should be defined. But at that time, if one thinks in terms of the 1930s, property rights were a significant driver of economic development and so it is necessary in my view that property rights should be protected to the extent that is appropriate.