Professor Colm O'Cinneide:

I very much echo everything the committee has just heard. The point about the NAMA legislation is extremely well made. It is very interesting, counterfactually, as Mr. Stanley just set out, to consider what would have happened if things had been different. That is quite important.

To go back to something Deputy Ó Broin said, I will emphasise that a great deal of expert academic opinion from Dr. Rachael Walsh, Dr. Padraic Kenna and others in Ireland, rightly states the concerns about property rights provision in the Constitution are over-exaggerated. There is a lingering legacy of a few questionable Supreme Court decisions from the 1980s that hang like a miasma over this area and they can be exaggerated. That is true. I also think that what often matters when it comes to legal constitutional analysis is risk and uncertainty rather than the rights and wrongs of a specific legal question. What happens, and what has happened in Ireland for quite some time, is a general air of uncertainty prevails about the freedom of State action in the housing sphere, including the State's capacity to regulate and act. That uncertainty can have a paralysing effect, often inside Government and when the Government defends its actions against external political criticism. There can be interdepartmental discussions and if there is uncertainty and legal risk, that can prevent things moving forward. One of the principal potential advantages of putting a right to housing in the Constitution is that it reduces the legal risk and the legal uncertainty. That can be quite important.