Ms Rosemary Hennigan:

On Finland, I am not a Finnish expert so if any of my colleagues want to jump in they can do so. It is a different constitutional system. Whenever we look at those international comparators, there are limits to them. We raised them because in creating this sort of a right we have options open to us in terms of how we as a state will go about vindicating that right, especially in terms of economic and social rights. They are different so it does not have to be business as usual in terms of how we interact with them. We can develop our own way of doing that in the best way for Ireland, bearing in mind our own constitutional system. It is worth looking to other jurisdictions in that sense but my colleagues might have more on that for the Chairman.

In terms of the policies that might have been brought forward were it not for this protection of private property rights, Article 43 does have regard for the common good. What we are seeing in many cases is that Bills do not even get past Second Stage.

I have not seen the courts look at Article 43 and determine what the content of it might be, as regards private property rights. That means that we are very much stuck with case law from decades ago which is tied up in different contexts, and that is very important to think about when we are looking at this issue. However, at the same time, there is a very deep political chilling effect from Article 43, which we have seen in a range of different areas, the most recent one being the eviction ban which came to an end in July 2020. As I said, we do not know what the reason was for that, but it is on the record that it was constitutional concerns. I do not want to repeat myself, but in circumstances where there is an ongoing public health threat to the extent that we can close restaurants, pubs, cafés, shops, yet we can only protect the interests of tenants in the private rental market in a very narrow way, then we really have to ask ourselves if Article 43 can have a outside influence on our political culture when it comes to housing policy and law.