Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Some of us would argue that it is poorly designed policy with respect to the private rental sector that has led to the crisis in that sector and all of the unintended consequences that flow from that but we will debate that another day. One could say that there is a case to be made that private sector landlords might see the right to housing in the Constitution as a positive thing. One complaint of landlords is that the failure of the State to provide an adequate supply of social and affordable housing has led to an over-reliance on the private rental sector to meet a range of housing needs it was not designed to meet. Landlords often complain to this committee that the solution to the homelessness crisis is more social housing. Therefore, if it is presented in the right way, they might see this as a benefit in stabilising the housing system overall in a way that might be conducive to good landlords complying with the law etc., but that is a debate we can have at a later stage.

I am really interested in the fact that Professor O'Cinneide said there is some research around the positive impact of legal or constitutional rights to housing in a number of jurisdictions. If he was in a position to share by way of an email to the committee links to any academic papers or articles he thinks would be useful for us to read, that would be really interesting because those are the kind of tangible things we would be very keen to promote.

We spoke about the children's referendum. One of the problems with that referendum is that the result was taken for granted from the outset. It was a very lacklustre campaign. Everybody thought "who is going to be against enshrining the rights of children in the Constitution?" and we were all caught off guard even though the entire political system was in favour of that referendum. The lessons of marriage equality and repeal in particular show that you take nothing for granted. You have a positive message and convince people of the merits of the argument not just by the human stories but door to door. Let us not forget that this debate started in earnest in 2014 with the constitutional convention on social and economic rights. After open and informed public deliberation, including strong arguments for and against, 84% of people voted in that convention to enshrine the right to housing as one of a number of social and economic rights. That gives me great confidence because what it says is that if the debate is open, transparent, honest and sincere with people about what this can and cannot do and we listen to people's genuine concerns and respond to them in an intelligent way, reasonable people will do what reasonable people always do and vote the right way. The constitutional convention should give us some comfort in that regard. I am not really looking for a response. I want to end on that because we often forget that there has already been a very extensive public deliberation on this matter. It was instituted by the Acting Chairman's party. It gave us some very good research and documentation. People should go back to that report, which was published in 2014, because it is a really important starting point for us after almost a decade of debate around this. If Professor O'Cinneide has anything he thinks the committee should read, could he send it on because some of us would be very interested to see that?