Thomas Pringle (Donegal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank my colleagues in Independents 4 Change for their support for the Bill as well as the AAA-PBP Members. They outlined in their contributions the necessity to have ESC rights enshrined in our Constitution and how, rather than debating them in the House, we should debate them with citizens. As Deputy Broughan said, I have no doubt the amendment would be passed by an overwhelming majority.

Perhaps that is what Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are afraid of because it would make Governments accountable for the decisions that they make. The common theme in the contributions of both parties to the debate is that they do not want to be accountable for making decisions that destroy people's lives across the State. I will deal with the contributions of both parties together because they are similar. I would summarise them in two points. The first is "Leave your rights with us and we will look after them". We have seen how that has worked for people. Both Ministers cited that fact that Traveller ethnicity was recognised a few weeks ago in the House. Is it something to be proud of that it took 30 years to get to the point where the House would recognise the citizenship rights of an ethnic minority? The second is "You can have your rights but not just now so you have to wait". The Minister of State outlined that the Government would progressively deal with these rights but they cannot be inserted in the Constitution.

The crux of the argument is that doing so would remove power from the Dáil and hand it over to the courts. Obviously that shows that he has not read the convention because it refers to "the principle of progressive realisation". That means that states are subject to resource constraints and, therefore, the convention recognises that. It also means that states are expected to act as best they can within the means available to them, which further strengthens this. That concept is perfectly in accordance with constitutional obligations on ESC rights. Portugal, Latvia and other countries have enshrined these rights in their constitutions and the world has not stopped turning. The lights have not gone out and everything has not collapsed. Those countries are still functioning democracies and judges are not running around making laws, ruling the state and deciding what taxation should be used for. This is not rocket science. This is about accountability and changing the culture of Governments whereby they can bestow virtues on people and bestow tax cuts, etc., on them.

If these rights had been enshrined in our Constitution, the Government might have been restrained in giving away €2.5 billion in tax breaks over the past few years and could have used that money to deliver housing for people and to deliver a health care system that they could be proud of and use to care for themselves. It could have made the past eight or nine years of austerity less burdensome on people because, for example, when the Latvian Government was negotiating with international lenders, it was able to use the fact that ESC rights were enshrined in its constitution to ease the burden of the conditions that were placed on the state in its bailout programme. That is what ESC rights could have for our Governments rather than placing constraints on them and making it more difficult for them.

One of the most startling issues concerns the right to housing and the fact that, as Deputy Wallace outlined, thousands of children and families are living in hotels while there are thousands of unused houses throughout the country. However, the Government parties will not act in this regard because they insist on ensuring that banks are able to pump up and falsely build their balance sheets in order that they can be sold off at the best price. They have manufactured a crisis rather than dealing with the issues and the problems. Scotland has enshrined the right to housing in legislation. The provision of housing is more cost effective there than it is here because the country has those rights. That is the difference they could make.

I did not deal with the Labour Party amendment but that is okay because there is no need to. I thank the ESC Rights Initiative for its work on this. It was a pleasure to work with Aiden Lloyd, especially, on this. He is present in the Visitors Gallery. I would also like to thank Fr. Peter McVerry of the McVerry Trust and Bríd O'Brien of the INOU who attended the launch of the Bill earlier. It is disappointing that the Government would not accept the legislation and that Fianna Fáil wants us to put the amendment on the long finger and wait another 20 or 30 years for it to be realised but that is not surprising. We will keep going and we will keep pushing. We will get there eventually.

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