Mr. Wayne Stanley:

The only additional point I will make is it is worthwhile considering where we would be now, if we had that constitutional right in place from 2008 to 2011. Some decisions were made that people recognised at the time were controversial. There was an insertion into the National Asset Management Agency, NAMA, legislation around there being a public good element to it that, in my view, was never really progressed. Certainly, when we read the presentations of NAMA to this committee, its overarching ambition was to ensure that it achieved a profit that was returned to the State. The public good of housing was never a part of its thinking in any truly substantive way. If we had a constitutional right to housing, the thinking on that would have been different or, at least, the potential for thinking on it would have been greatly increased. That goes back to the fact this will not be a silver bullet that will drive things, but it will change the culture. In times of crisis, and leading up to times of crisis, that will be very important to the way we think about housing.