Pat Buckley (Cork East, Sinn Fein)
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Thanks very much Chair. I thank everybody for coming in. I am going to start in the middle. I have an admission to make to the Chair that Mr. O’Flynn is a former employer of mine, so we go back a good bit. There is certainly no conflict of interest.

I just will touch on a few points because a lot of it has been covered. A while ago we were checking what the European human rights commissioner said about the broad picture, which encompasses what Mr. O’Flynn said frightened the living daylights out of him. He was saying it was the availability of services, the affordability, the accessibility, the location and cultural adequacy. That could be anything. That is very broad. Mr. O’Flynn in his opening remarks said:

The law is not broken. Our housing targets have been too low for a number of years and because of this our zoning, infrastructure delivery [which is absolutely bonkers and we are miles behind on] and planning system are all out of sequence. Basically, our housing system is broken.

I move to Mr. Boyle. The problem with coming in last is you get all the points and all the articles. It was like a game of Scrabble a while ago when I was listening to all the different articles. Mr. Boyle said in the conclusion of his statement that "... we can place an enforceable obligation on the State to take measures to protect this right". Whether it is in the majority report or the minority report it was very interesting. Dr. Lyons stated:

Articles 43.2.1 and 43.2.2 of the Constitution provide considerable scope to the Oireachtas to regulate private property rights in accordance with the principles of social justice and to advance the common good.

He noted "This was something where both the minority and majority reports agreed." He continued by noting "The minority report's proposal actually comes from the list of options in the majority report itself - to place, in Article 45 [new text]".

We have all been talking about legislative stuff here, but it is down to building houses at the end of the day. We have had instances at other committees where there have been four or five people protecting each patch. We have two reports now. Can people not just get into one room and sign off on this? They could decide to take out the difference between Article 45, Article 43.2.1° and Article 43.2.2°. There was an issue with, I think, Article 40A.1°.

They are all rights and they respect housing. I am afraid of courts to an extent because it is about how you determine what a right is.

Mr. O'Flynn made a very interesting statement, He said: "I believe that the record will show that I have dedicated much of my time over the past decade advocating for policies which would make housing affordable and accessible to all.". At the end of day, this is what we are talking about. We want housing to be affordable and accessible to all. How do we, as legislators, ensure that affordability and accessibility for everyone is the main goal? How do we address that but also address the fact we have massive capacity issues when it comes to water and sewerage? We have an inundated planning system. It is very late in this Dáil term, but surely there could be some kind of a policy document, a Green Paper or something where everyone can sit down or even come in here and sit in front of the housing committee to thrash out these three points I have made and say, while we are at it, we need to have availability of services.

We have mentioned affordability and accessibility but we also have to look at the culture. This could be Traveller-specific accommodation or accommodation for people with disabilities. Everything has to be encompassed in that and, of course, location is vital for services. Have we gone too far? Have we missed the boat? There are probably only two or three weeks left in this term. There are probably only two weeks left because we are officially off next week.

What do the witnesses think of that? We have moved way past discussing it when the stakeholders here today have put it in their blueprints and their statements. How do we marry that together and say let us come up with a plan rather than Article 40A.1, Article 42.A. and so on. The question is open to anyone who wants to answer.