Ms Rebecca Keatinge:

I thank the Deputy for his questions and comments. Ms Hennigan may have some remarks to make as well.

We have seen that a right to housing has been included in the programme for Government. We are encouraged by the public statements by the Minister and, most recently, the Tánaiste indicating that this has been interpreted to mean a right to housing. That is our understanding. We very much hope to meet with Minister and we have written to him to seek a meeting. We hope to have a constructive engagement with him and his officials. We are here to present wording and to engage with members of the committee today and we also want to engage with the Minister and his Department so that we can arrive at something that will bring everyone along in what we hope will be an inclusive and constructive process.

In terms of defining social and affordable housing, and to speak to the points raised by Senator Moynihan, the wording we propose is quite stark. It is not detailed because we do not see the Constitution as a place to include a detailed description of a form of housing. We believe that housing should be adequate, a matter to which Professor Whyte spoke, and that is what is defined and explored in General Comment No. 4, the document to which I referred the committee earlier. I refer to words such as "affordable" and "secure". These are all things that we are on board with but we do not feel that the Constitution is the appropriate place to include them. We also think that there are interpretative difficulties with those two words as well. That is my comment on how we have arrived at the wording. Ms Hennigan may have something to add.