Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank Ms Farha and Ms Kerin for their presentations. Ms Farha has been exceptionally busy during the two short days that she has spent in this country and we have followed her interventions. It is a pity that she is not here on an official visit to assess our implementation, or non-implementation, of the right to housing because the picture might be a little more bleak than her opening remarks suggest.

I compliment the Mercy Law Resource Centre on the work that it does and I say so not to be polite. The centre makes a huge difference to the lives of a very significant number of people. For the benefit of people who do not know the organisation, it must be one of the smallest housing non-governmental organisations, NGOs, in the country, and the only one that has a legal basis, yet it punches way above its weight.

In 2014, the Citizens' Assembly voted by an overwhelming majority of 88% to have the right to housing enshrined in the Constitution. Therefore, I believe that all of our conversations on housing must start from that point. The Government set up the Citizens' Assembly with the aim of asking citizens for their views. The vote on housing was the single largest vote in terms of the deliberations on socio-economic rights. Many of us were members of the Dáil Select Committee on Housing and Homelessness, which met before the current Government came into office. While we could not get agreement between the parties over calling for a constitutional right to housing, although many of us argued for it, the committee made a clear recommendation that the current Oireachtas Joint Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government should explore the issue. In fact, the Government included the proposal in its Programme for Government. Our problem is that the responsibility has been taken away from us. Last year, the Dáil voted against the wishes of a minority of us and transferred the responsibility from the housing committee, where it belongs, to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach. To me, the idea that such a committee could have the lead responsibility in deliberations on socio-economic issues clearly shows that the parties that voted for that resolution thought that the matter should, first and foremost, be based on cost implications. I do not want to turn this matter into a political football. All I will say is that I urge all of the parties to reconsider those arguments and to see whether we could bring the matter back to this committee, even to work in parallel with the finance committee, so that we can consider the housing policy implications of this important issue.

I have a few questions for Ms Farha. Many of us here are not as conversant with international human rights law as Ms Farha. Can she tell us what international human rights obligations Ireland has and how they should impact on our debate on this particular issue?

Sometimes we spend too much time talking about the negative aspects. Can Ms Farha, from her international experience, give us as much information as possible in the short time available about what works in other jurisdictions? Such information will give a sense of the positive examples of best practice that we might seek to apply here.

Many of us attended the launch of the MLRC's report that took place a month ago. It is a very good report that sets out different options. Can the witnesses, as front-line human rights defenders of housing rights, tell us their preferred option? What is the best way that this State could protect and vindicate the right to housing? Crucially, how do we fix the gap between having a constitutional right, which in and of itself is important, realised in Government policy and having legal vindication? I do not want to put the witnesses on the spot but please give me a straight answer to the following. Do they believe the Government's housing policy is human rights compliant, in terms of their understanding of the right to housing?