Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The challenges that we face today are very different to the challenges that we faced in housing eight years ago with 3,000 ghost housing estates and hundreds of thousands plunged into negative equity and mortgage distress. It is not true to say that property rights trump other rights in the Constitution. There is a balance of rights and that is why we were able to bring in the vacant site levy and increase it to 10% over a two-year period. That is why we have been able to bring in rent controls. That is why we have compulsory purchase order powers. We recognise that the public good trumps individual rights in certain instances but we can only take them so far.

On the unconstitutionality of not being able to prevent a sale of a property for rent with tenants in situ, that is unconstitutional. I have to work on the advice of the Attorney General-----

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