Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

On the constitutional change, the point remains that it would not have solved the problem. I do not have the Bill in front of me, and there have been a few pieces of legislation or proposals put to me around this whole area of tenants' rights on when a property is for sale or on whether it can be sold at all. I do not want to be too exact, but from memory it was not just that it was unconstitutional. It would not have solved the problem for the reasons I outlined. It has a displacement effect. It does not get us where we need to go.

There is a balance of rights in the Constitution between individual property rights and the public good. We have been stretching those rights when it comes to things like the vacant site levy and other measures we have brought in around tenant protection, and things like that. We have been constantly stretching those rights in favour of the public good versus individual property rights. I have not let someone say individual property rights deter us from a course we need to take.

On written advice from the Attorney General, it would depend on the mechanism by which the Deputy put the Bill to me and whether I have to take a memo to Cabinet, circumstances in which we would get observations from the Attorney General. However, I know straight up, because we have looked at this issue a few times, that the first barrier is constitutionality. It arose with the anti-evictions Bill and the tenants in situBill. The tenants in situBill was less severe than the anti-evictions Bill, but both failed the constitutionality test when they were explored. It would depend on whether it was a Private Members' Bill and whether I brought a memo to Cabinet.