Ms Rosemary Hennigan:

One interesting way to look at this is to take the example of how the right to housing works in Finland. It is not so much a right to a house in a place of a person's choice but more about building into our laws and planning, and our decisions on budget and infrastructure, a thought and a consideration for housing and for the impact on people of housing.

That is one of the very important effects of the right to housing. In that specific case, when it comes to decisions on investment in Limerick, infrastructure such as roads and all of those kinds of issues, one would ask how that will have an impact on the right to housing locally in Limerick or anywhere in the country. It works more in that sense. Finland, for example, which Ms Keatinge mentioned briefly earlier, has a pre-legislative rights committee, which it set up as a way to vindicate the right to housing in a way that works best for it. An Oireachtas committee such as this one would sit down and consider, when dealing with planning legislation, how it impacts on the right to housing and what needs to be considered to vindicate that right. That is probably the way that we would see the right to housing working in that sort of case.