Professor Colm O'Cinneide:

These are all excellent questions. Vindication can come in different forms, including political and legal. There is often a tendency to think that because it is in the Constitution, it must be legal. The Constitution was never designed to be just legal. I will come to the political side in a moment. Legal avenues are potentially opened if there is visibly a condition of totally inadequate housing supply. For example, where housing accommodation for a disabled member of a family might be utterly inadequate and the State is manifestly screwing up and failing to act. In that situation, there is potentially room for legal action. One can talk to an advice agency such as Free Legal Advice Centres and to civil society organisations to try to help in that respect.

An often-neglected aspect of this is the political aspect. There is something concrete in that a person can go to a Deputy, Senator or even to the Ombudsman, as well as other similar complaint structure, to say what is happening. The right to housing does not create whole new legal structures or provide a magic bullet, as the Senator rightly said, but it puts a spotlight on the different vindication avenues and makes everyone in the system aware that this right exists and must be responded to.