Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

The basis of the policies of this and previous Governments led by me has been to create housing for everybody by affordable, social and private means and to reach that position through policies and grants to local authorities, facilities for building societies and other mechanisms. It would be difficult to frame a constitutional right for that but we are putting resources worth billions of euro into social housing and making huge efforts on affordable housing, and private housing numbers increase every year. Our policies are addressing these issues. Putting that into a constitutional amendment was considered at some stage in the past but it will be difficult to do so.

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