Mr. Wayne Stanley:

My colleague, Ms Keatinge, and I shall share the delivery of our opening statement. As chairperson of the Home for Good Coalition, I extend our thanks to the Oireachtas committee for the invitation to present on this issue of bringing forward the referendum on a right to housing.

Home for Good is a coalition of housing non-governmental organisations or NGOs. They include the Fórsa trade union, academics, activists and lawyers. As a group, we believe that constitutional change is urgently required to rebalance our Constitution, and ensure that enabling the provision of secure and adequate housing be recognised as a central role of the State. We call for a referendum to provide a constitutional amendment that would insert a stand-alone right to housing in our Constitution.

As advocates and experts, we understand how important a right to housing will be for those experiencing homelessness, and for those in inadequate, unaffordable, unsafe, insecure or overcrowded accommodation. A constitutional right to housing will recognise that a balance must be struck between the right to private property, on the one hand, and the right to housing, on the other hand.

The period of the Covid-19 pandemic has starkly demonstrated the importance of an adequate home to keep a person safe. As a group we are more certain than ever of the need to amend the Constitution to ensure that the necessary policies can be implemented to work towards ending the housing exclusion and homelessness that has marred our society for too long, and in the pandemic has left too many vulnerable.

The Home for Good Coalition welcomes the inclusion of a referendum on housing in the programme for Government. We have monitored the discussions of the committee so welcome, within the committee, what appears to us to be a very strong cross-party consensus that this will be a referendum on a right to housing. We now wish to work closely with the committee to get the process under way of determining the wording and aims of this amendment. To that end, we began working with a group of legal experts to develop an amendment that will meet the objectives I have briefly outlined.

Professor Gerry Whyte has joined the meeting via Zoom technology and is professor of law at Trinity College Dublin. He is one of the experts who have given generously of their time.

We are also joined by Rosemary Hennigan, who is part of that legal group and who is a colleague from Focus Ireland. I will hand over to Rebecca Keatinge, who will outline why this referendum should be proposed with a view to having a stand-alone right to housing, and the wording which Home For Good has endorsed and believes best achieves this right.