Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I do not think I can remember a night in the past four years since this Government took office when we have been debating Private Members' business and there has been less interest. The Government has struggled to fill its speaking slots. All day today has been a fig-leaf of a session. It is something of an insult to the Opposition and the people who put this motion together.

What we will see in less than half an hour is no fewer than 55 people trooping into the Chamber to ensure the Government has a majority to vote down this Bill after paying no attention to it whatsoever. That is downright insulting. The Dáil week has been reduced because the referendums are on Friday. While I fully accept the marriage equality referendum is of great importance, people are asking what the second referendum is really about and whether it is one of the pivotal issues of our time. I would have thought issues such as housing and health care, both of which fall into the category under discussion tonight, would have been further up the pecking order of importance. People cannot find the time to come to the Chamber to sit and listen or contribute to this debate. That is really a disgrace. Another point is the tone of the people who have spoken which has not been in the spirit intended. What is intended is to look to the future about how we can change this country by putting rights into the Constitution. We know full well that a right stated in the Constitution has a different impact from certain legislation. This is why it is seen to have the importance it has.

I was one of those who took part in the Constitutional Convention. The convention was given a set agenda of eight topics to consider over a period of almost a year. There was only one opportunity to select a topic that the convention could choose. We should remember that the convention was a Labour Party initiative and that it was in the programme for Government. It is not something that a bunch of people simply thought up. I would have thought there would have been some respect for the convention. The fact is that the members of the convention selected this particular topic after canvassing widely, after many submissions were made, after people spent a year meeting one weekend every month or thereabouts and having read a great deal of documentation before going to the convention with an understanding of exactly what a change to the Constitution meant and having taken it seriously, particularly the citizen members.

I think they expected more, and many of them said they would judge the convention by virtue of the seriousness with which the Government took it. Tonight's debate is hugely disappointing from that point of view.

We have had all sorts of efforts in this regard, including the All-Party Oireachtas Committee on the Constitution in the 1990s, with a couple of Golden-Pages-sized tomes as a consequence. It always seems that the Government postpones the important things rather than seizing the moment and taking responsibility for making the changes that are needed.

The Constitution states that the State will vindicate the property rights of every citizen, which, in effect, means that one has the right to own, transfer and inherit property. There are restrictions to this right by virtue of Article 43, which acknowledges that the right to property must be regulated by the principles of social justice. However, we very rarely see the social justice side of that emerging. The one thing that does not mean is the right to shelter; rather, it is the right to property. There is a very significant difference, and most people understand that. For example, there are 100,000 people on housing waiting lists and 1,000 children in inappropriate accommodation this week, which we would not want for our own children. If it is not good enough for us, it is not good enough for other people's children in terms of how they live their lives. As we speak, Dublin City Council is handing out sleeping bags.

I am working with several families who are facing homelessness. Just this week I received an e-mail from one family - a couple with three children - for whom I had gone to whatever lengths I could to sort out their difficulty. I decided I would e-mail the council because I did not want a verbal response on this issue. I received the following response:

Dear Deputy Murphy... I met with [the couple] last week. The meeting was not successful in resolving their housing needs as the only message I could impart was the one we have to give all families in similar situations to [this couple's], which is that there is no short-term homeless accommodation available and they have to seek help from relatives in providing short-term accommodation, or that they have to seek their own private rental accommodation to meet their needs. This has to include their trying to rent where the market is affordable, which may be outside the county. We are aware that renting outside the county is difficult because the legislation requires a local connection to an area in another county to successfully apply to be on the housing list in that county, which is normally a precondition to applying for private rent subsidy anywhere in the country. While some families can establish a connection in another county, many cannot.

That is a load of nonsense, as the Minister of State knows. It is the standard reply that is being given to people who find themselves in a homeless situation. If a right to housing was stated in the Constitution, I believe we would get a different type of legislation. We would take the issue far more seriously and we would not see people like Jonathan Corrie tragically dying on the street within yards of this House.

Due to the impediments that exist in the Constitution, we cannot, for example, have rent caps, and when it comes to commercial property, we cannot end upward-only rent reviews and we cannot tax rezoned land in the way that was envisaged in the Kenny report. We need to change our Constitution to reflect the modern-day issues that need this kind of attention and protection.

In terms of economic rights, we are living in a country where 10% of the population own 50% of the wealth, while we have a child poverty rate in excess of 29% and we rank 37th of 41 countries in the UNICEF league table. Putting economic rights into the Constitution in a meaningful way would make a difference in terms of the political culture that would flow from those rights, because, essentially, people could then appeal to the courts when those rights were not vindicated. I believe that is how we change the culture.

One would wonder why much that is currently contained in the Constitution has not been challenged. For example, Article 40 refers to:

The right of the citizens to express freely their convictions and opinions.

The education of public opinion [through] the radio, the press, the cinema, while preserving their rightful liberty of expression, including criticism of Government....

Yet we have a situation in which the ownership of the media, and people's litigiousness, are shutting down public debate. I believe reforms are required in terms of rebalancing those rights so that we have the right of expression and the right to know the things that are being written but not printed by virtue of the regime we have at the moment.

I am very welcoming of the visitors we have this week, the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall. However, given the absence of Members in the House, which I think is because of their attendance at a banquet and all the rest, I would have to wonder whether we are living in a republic. A republic is not something we choose to live in; it is something that is dynamic and that must keep evolving. There is no evidence that there is any real active determination to change the Constitution, to change the culture and to really give people fundamental rights. I have to say that the Government has let itself down very badly with the way this day has unfolded in the House.

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